AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has de­nied claims that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is seek­ing to hand over No Man’s Land to a pri­vate de­vel­op­er, a move that would force ven­dors to leave the area.

Au­gus­tine said no land has been giv­en to any busi­ness­man and de­scribed the claims cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia as false.

Ac­cu­sa­tions against the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) ad­min­is­tra­tion al­lege that a pri­vate de­vel­op­er had been grant­ed con­trol of No Man’s Land and that ven­dors were told they would have to va­cate.

One wide­ly shared mes­sage claimed the arrange­ment was linked to land pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied for the San­dals Re­sort project.

Speak­ing at a To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty meet­ing in Sig­nal Hill and Pa­tience Hill on Mon­day night, Au­gus­tine sought to ad­dress the claims di­rect­ly.

“Let me be pel­lu­cid­ly clear—this Chief Sec­re­tary, this gov­ern­ment and this ex­ec­u­tive has not giv­en any lands to any pri­vate de­vel­op­er down at No Man’s Land,” he stat­ed.

He ex­plained that a busi­ness­man had ap­proached the THA with an of­fer to up­grade vend­ing fa­cil­i­ties at the site—in­clud­ing ac­cess to wa­ter, toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, and com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al health and safe­ty stan­dards—at no cost to the gov­ern­ment or the peo­ple of To­ba­go. In re­turn, the busi­ness­man asked whether the THA would be will­ing to main­tain the fa­cil­i­ties if they were built.

Au­gus­tine said he ad­vised the busi­ness­man to first en­gage the ven­dors and then sub­mit a for­mal pro­pos­al to the THA.

“The gen­tle­man has not even pro­vid­ed us with a pro­pos­al as yet for us to even make a de­ci­sion,” Au­gus­tine said. “So how we reach to them spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da on the man name say­ing that some­how, we sign away land and we’re putting off ven­dors?”

He added that if ven­dors were be­ing evict­ed, they would have re­ceived for­mal le­gal no­tices from the THA.

“And I’m sure no ven­dor, no pro­pri­etor in No Man’s Land re­ceived any no­tice from the THA that they must leave. So, it is a to­tal fab­ri­ca­tion that we are putting out peo­ple to give one pri­vate per­son land in No Man’s Land,” he as­sert­ed.

Au­gus­tine al­so said the land at No Man’s Land is not vest­ed in the THA, not­ing that when the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment pur­sued the San­dals re­sort project, the land was not trans­ferred to the As­sem­bly.

“The land is not even vest­ed in the THA. So how can we give away what is not vest­ed in the THA?”

How­ev­er, ven­dors at No Man’s Land told Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er that they were un­easy about re­cent de­vel­op­ments. They said a man they be­lieved to be a con­trac­tor told them work would be­gin with­in three weeks, in­clud­ing the de­mo­li­tion of their ex­ist­ing sheds and the con­struc­tion of new stalls.

The ven­dors al­so claimed they were told they would be re­quired to pay rent, some­thing they said had nev­er ap­plied be­fore. They ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment, say­ing they had long main­tained the area them­selves af­ter it was aban­doned, and be­lieve the gov­ern­ment has now recog­nised the site’s com­mer­cial val­ue with­out con­sult­ing them.