Jensen La Vende

Sev­er­al fam­i­lies in Ve­ga de Oropouche, San­gre Grande, did not have a Good Fri­day yes­ter­day, af­ter their homes were de­mol­ished by agents of the State who claim the fam­i­lies were oc­cu­py­ing State lands il­le­gal­ly. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the de­mo­li­tion of homes start­ed on Thurs­day and end­ed yes­ter­day. Over 80 struc­tures were de­mol­ished.

The res­i­dents who lost their homes said po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers came and de­mol­ished their homes around 9 am yes­ter­day. They claimed they had not been no­ti­fied that they were to move and none of them were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­move any valu­ables from the home.

One res­i­dent, Sher­win Jack, said he lost over $100,000 af­ter his two-bed­room home was de­stroyed. Jack said he now has to look for a place for his wife and four chil­dren, who range in ages from 18 months to 11 years. He added that he had been liv­ing in the area for the past 12 years and had re­ceived no no­tice of evic­tion from the land.He said some time ago he re­ceived a house num­ber, which was 23, from agents who rep­re­sent­ed them­selves as act­ing on be­half of the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA).

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Lisa Ma­haraj, said she lost every­thing, in­clud­ing her son's be­long­ings. She said she fled to the com­mu­ni­ty from an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship, but now has nowhere to sleep."I plead with them to get my things but they just come and bull­doze every­thing. I have nowhere to go now I have to sleep on the streets," Ma­haraj said.

Him­chan Sal­ick­ram said he went out and when he re­turned home he found it in sham­bles. Sal­ick­ram said his six-year-old asth­mat­ic son is in need of her­nia re­pair surgery, which is sup­posed to be done at the San­gre Grande Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal, but af­ter the de­mo­li­tion he could not find his ap­point­ment slip. The self-em­ployed fa­ther of one said he could not even re-con­struct a struc­ture to spend the night.The res­i­dents ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment for help.

At­tempts to con­tact both Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and of­fi­cials at the LSA were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day as calls to their cell phones went to voice mes­sage.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Lieu­tenant Com­man­der of the De­fence Force, Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste, con­firmed that the en­gi­neer­ing bat­tal­ion based at Camp Cu­mu­to had as­sist­ed in the de­mo­li­tion of the struc­tures on the re­quest of the Forestry Di­vi­sion and the LSA, who say the land is for­est re­serve land and wa­ter­shed ar­eas which in re­cent time has been flood­ed with peo­ple erect­ing struc­tures.Jean-Bap­tiste claimed most of the homes were un­oc­cu­pied and those who were oc­cu­py­ing homes were giv­en no­tices to va­cate the land.