Derek Achong

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has been barred from com­menc­ing or con­tin­u­ing work on a hous­ing project near or on the site of the St Au­gus­tine Nurs­eries, pend­ing the out­come of a law­suit over the de­ci­sion of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) to grant per­mis­sion for the de­vel­op­ment. 

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten de­ci­sion on Tues­day, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed is­sued the in­junc­tion against the HDC as he grant­ed en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh and farmer Shi­raz Khan leave to pur­sue their ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against the EMA. 

Through the law­suit, Kublals­ingh and Khan are seek­ing to quash the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) which the HDC ob­tained from the EMA in Sep­tem­ber 2018. 

Un­der the CEC, the HDC was grant­ed per­mis­sion to con­struct 12 eight-sto­ry apart­ment build­ings with 504 apart­ments on 17.4 acres of land in Curepe oc­cu­pied by the nurs­eries, which falls un­der the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries and was used to col­lect, con­serve and prop­a­gate plant ma­te­r­i­al for lo­cal farm­ers.

In the law­suit, the duo is claim­ing that the EMA should have re­quest­ed that the HDC per­form a com­pre­hen­sive en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment be­fore grant­i­ng the CEC be­cause of the po­ten­tial per­ma­nent neg­a­tive im­pacts of the project. 

In op­pos­ing the duo be­ing grant­ed leave to pur­sue the case, the EMA chal­lenged their de­lay in fil­ing it and claimed that it would be prej­u­di­cial and detri­men­tal to good ad­min­is­tra­tion, as it would fur­ther de­lay a much-need­ed pub­lic project for mid­dle and low-in­come fam­i­lies. It al­so claimed that the duo did not raise any ar­guable grounds which may have a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess at an even­tu­al tri­al. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ject­ed its com­plaint over the de­lay, as he not­ed that while it should have been filed soon­er, the duo was not out­side the three-month dead­line for do­ing so. 

“Notwith­stand­ing the im­por­tance of the project and the like­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive costs in­curred thus far, I do not find that there has been un­due de­lay in mak­ing this ap­pli­ca­tion,”  Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

He al­so said a pre­lim­i­nary analy­sis of the grounds raised by the duo showed the case was not weak as con­tend­ed by the EMA. 

Deal­ing specif­i­cal­ly with the duo’s claim that the EMA is­sued the CEC with­out full and ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion on the im­pact of the project, Jus­tice Mo­hammed said: “Giv­en my above find­ings that there is ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the EMA may have con­sid­ered in­ac­cu­rate and de­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the HDC in mak­ing its de­ter­mi­na­tion on the ap­pli­ca­tion, I con­clude that this ground has a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess.”

As part of his de­ci­sion in the case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered the duo to serve the law­suit on the HDC. 

Kublals­ingh and Khan are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon and Arya Ma­habir. Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Tekiyah Jorsling and Mau­rice Wishart rep­re­sent­ed the EMA. 

The case is sched­uled to come up for case man­age­ment on Sep­tem­ber 13.