Of­fi­cials have re­spond­ed to the de­mo­li­tion of squat­ting homes in Ram­jat­tan Trace off Tumpuna Road, South La Hor­quet­ta.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), took ac­tion to ad­dress il­le­gal squat­ting at the La Cule­bra site, lo­cat­ed at Ram­jat­tan Trace. The cor­po­ra­tion said that 20 il­le­gal struc­tures were de­mol­ished in Oc­to­ber 2024 as part of an ef­fort to clear state lands for prop­er use. The land is owned by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, who au­tho­rised the op­er­a­tion.

The cor­po­ra­tion al­so ex­plained that no­tices were served to the oc­cu­pants of 12 ad­di­tion­al struc­tures, ask­ing them to va­cate the prop­er­ty by Jan­u­ary 2025.

Res­i­dents have ac­knowl­edged re­ceiv­ing the let­ters but said they were un­signed and not at­trib­uted to any agency.

They said that re­cent satel­lite im­agery con­firmed many of these struc­tures were ei­ther new­ly built or still un­der con­struc­tion, with some be­ing erect­ed as re­cent­ly as 2023. Wood­en and con­crete struc­tures were marked for re­moval. The HDC's re­lease al­so said that they un­cov­ered un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty, with some peo­ple il­le­gal­ly sell­ing por­tions of state land and col­lect­ing mon­ey from un­sus­pect­ing buy­ers. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are un­der­way to ad­dress these ac­tions.

The HDC re­lease said the gov­ern­ment gave the oc­cu­pants an ad­di­tion­al nine days to va­cate the premis­es and re­move their be­long­ings be­fore de­mo­li­tion. They added that this ex­ten­sion was in­tend­ed to pro­vide a rea­son­able tran­si­tion while en­forc­ing the law. The cor­po­ra­tion said gov­ern­ment's on­go­ing com­mit­ment to man­ag­ing state lands prop­er­ly and en­sur­ing these prop­er­ties are used for their in­tend­ed pur­pos­es, in­clud­ing ad­vanc­ing hous­ing so­lu­tions for cit­i­zens in need.