Derek Achong

A cou­ple from South Oropouche has set­tled their law­suit over the ac­qui­si­tion of sev­er­al acres of their land for the con­struc­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin. 

The cou­ple, who this news­pa­per agreed not to iden­ti­fy based on their lawyers’ con­cerns that they may be tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals, was ini­tial­ly claim­ing $6 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion but agreed to take up a $3.4 mil­lion set­tle­ment of­fer made the by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port ear­li­er this month. 

When their con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion came up for hear­ing be­fore High Court Judge Bet­sy Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son, the con­sent or­der be­tween the par­ties was en­tered and the case was with­drawn. 

Ac­cord­ing to their law­suit, the min­istry no­ti­fied the cou­ple that it want­ed to ac­quire four acres of their land, lo­cat­ed along Lake Road in Mon De­sir, in May 2012. The cou­ple sued the State af­ter the land was used and they were not paid. 

The cou­ple claimed that the chose the prop­er­ty as they want­ed to get in­to a large scale agri­cul­ture busi­ness and the area had good soil. 

The cou­ple built a large green­house, dug sev­er­al ponds for a tilapia farm and plant­ed 1,200 cit­rus trees, which were in­ter-cropped with plan­tain plants.  

“Due to the land that was avail­able to us we took ad­van­tage of economies of scale. The green­house that was con­struct­ed was the largest in the area and we planned it that way. At the time that the lands were the sub­ject of ac­qui­si­tion, our green­house was ful­ly es­tab­lished, and we were sup­ply­ing the en­tire mar­ket of farm­ers in the south-west­ern area of the coun­try,” the cou­ple said in the claim. 

They claimed that when the State took pos­ses­sion of the land and grad­ed it, three acres of the land with 900 plants were cleared with one-acre be­ing left be­hind un­touched. 

“My wife and I have been made to suf­fer the hard­ship of hav­ing our busi­ness ru­ined. What is left of the land that was not used for the high­way, high­lights what we have lost. The fruit trees have ma­tured and pro­duced fruit be­yond our ex­pec­ta­tions but be­cause of the ac­tions of the State and not be­ing able to se­cure the trees prop­er­ly much of the crop was stolen. I have still been able to reap some of the crops, but the joy of har­vest­ing on­ly brings the pain of what we have lost,” they said. 

The cou­ple was rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen and Dayadai Har­ri­paul. 

Con­struc­tion on the high­way be­gan in 2011 un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion. The project faced re­peat­ed de­lays through protest ac­tion by the High­way Reroute Move­ment and its leader Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh.

Kublals­ingh and the res­i­dents filed a law­suit over the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to con­sult with them pri­or to con­struct­ing the Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment of the high­way. The judge­ment in the case is still pend­ing. 

Con­struc­tion even­tu­al­ly stopped due to is­sues with fi­nanc­ing and Brazil­ian con­trac­tor OAS Con­stru­to­ra. The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) has re­cov­ered al­most $1 bil­lion in ar­bi­tra­tion with OAS. 

The project has since been restart­ed with work on sev­er­al key seg­ments of the high­way. The project is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber, next year.