Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

As the en­tire coun­try awaits the grand open­ing of the new To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal to­mor­row, one dis­placed res­i­dent is still strug­gling to pick up the pieces.

Kay Pan­tin Solomon, 72, who now re­sides in Shir­van, says her re­lo­ca­tion has caused her con­sid­er­able trau­ma and left her in fi­nan­cial dis­tress.

Her stan­dard of liv­ing, she said, has been dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced, as she grap­pled with the death of her hus­band, an un­favourable will and sub-stan­dard work from con­trac­tors on her new home.

Pan­tin Solomon said her night­mare start­ed in 2019 when her hus­band died, leav­ing their guest­house to her step­son. De­spite the cir­cum­stances, Pan­tin Solomon said, through an at­tor­ney, she was able to get com­pen­sa­tion from the Gov­ern­ment. She said a space in Cove was pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied by her and her hus­band, but she did not have suf­fi­cient funds to buy it any­more.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia last Thurs­day, the el­der­ly wid­ow said she felt tak­en ad­van­tage of by un­scrupu­lous con­trac­tors who took thou­sands of dol­lars and left her with a house falling apart.

“I is a woman. They know I don’t know bet­ter,” she said, as she point­ed to sig­nif­i­cant cracks on the walls of her home and the floor­ing. On one beam, chunks of con­crete had al­ready bro­ken away. She said win­dows were al­so dif­fi­cult to in­stall in some ar­eas as it would fur­ther desta­bilise the walls.

Af­ter liv­ing two years with­out elec­tric­i­ty as she strug­gled to re­build her life, the pen­sion­er is un­sure where she will find the funds to do re­pairs.

“I don’t have a TV in my house. I don’t have in­ter­net. I have no prob­lem re­lo­cat­ing, but as a wid­ow and sin­gle per­son, it re­al­ly hard.

“I can­not work. If they see a pen­sion­er get a lit­tle some­thing, they will take it away.”

She claimed Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had promised to pro­vide as­sis­tance, but she has yet to re­ceive it.

She said the phys­i­cal, fi­nan­cial and emo­tion­al stress of the sit­u­a­tion is tak­ing its toll.

“I had a guest­house, so com­ing from a guest­house to this, how could I ex­plain it?

“Is on­ly the God of heav­en that I serve that is keep­ing me, be­cause this is re­al­ly heart­break­ing, dev­as­tat­ing, for one in­di­vid­ual to go through by my­self. It very, very hard.”

Mean­while, an­oth­er res­i­dent, who wished to stay anony­mous, said re­set­tling in Shir­van was dif­fi­cult ow­ing to in­ad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion and poor in­fra­struc­ture.

He said, “It have cer­tain things they didn’t put in place prop­er­ly for the res­i­dents. Watch the con­di­tion of the road. The road very bad. Grass grow­ing in the road. Watch the drainage block up by grass, and no­body com­ing here to cut it.”

He said the prices of steel and oth­er ma­te­ri­als went up con­sid­er­ably, leav­ing many res­i­dents un­able to prop­er­ly re­build their lives.

One dis­placed res­i­dent de­clined to speak about the sit­u­a­tion, her eyes welling up as she spoke briefly. She said talk­ing about their re­lo­ca­tion brought up mem­o­ries of the sen­ti­men­tal val­ue lost in their pre­vi­ous homes.

How­ev­er, she is hop­ing to ben­e­fit from one of the 50 hous­ing units promised by Au­gus­tine to those af­fect­ed. She al­so wel­comed Au­gus­tine’s in­vi­ta­tion for af­fect­ed res­i­dents to at­tend the air­port’s open­ing.

“I will go. I have to go there when I trav­el­ling any­way. I went when (for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th) Row­ley had the (prac­ti­cal open­ing) cer­e­mo­ny last year, so I will at­tend,” she said.