The gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) have not changed their po­si­tions on the re­lo­ca­tion of and com­pen­sa­tion for Crown Point prop­er­ty own­ers dis­placed by the build­ing of the ter­mi­nal and sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture for the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at Crown Point.

This is ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary.

How­ev­er, they will give "fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion" to the time­frame for re­lo­cat­ing dis­placed res­i­dents.

Res­i­dents are re­quired to leave their prop­er­ties by No­vem­ber 2019.

The news comes fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween the Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Pro­vide Equiv­a­lent Eq­ui­table Com­pen­sa­tion for Every­one (PEECE) Move­ment on Mon­day, Au­gust 26.

The PEECE Move­ment was formed to unite per­sons af­fect­ed by the air­port ex­pan­sion project.

The re­lease said, “fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to en­sure res­i­dents are not re­quired to evac­u­ate lands be­fore Jan­u­ary 2020.”

It al­so said THA will pro­vide coun­sel­ing for per­sons whose health is be­ing af­fect­ed be­cause of the project and the PEECE Move­ment for­ward a list of per­sons with ir­reg­u­lar and/or pe­cu­liar prop­er­ty own­er­ship is­sues to the Chief Sec­re­tary.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the re­lease not­ed that the Air­port Re­lo­ca­tion Com­mit­tee, set up by the THA, iden­ti­fied lands at COVE (com­mer­cial) and Shir­van (res­i­den­tial) for af­fect­ed res­i­dents to con­sid­er for pur­chase, at a sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced cost.

Charles al­so ex­plained that while the THA is ready to be­gin de­vel­op­ment of the lands, it is wait­ing on ap­proval from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty.

Mean­while, Rhon­da Hack­ett, chair­man of the PEECE Move­ment, told Guardian Me­dia that while the meet­ing was "cor­dial" there was" no sig­nif­i­cant change in the THA's po­si­tion."

She said the res­i­dents vowed to main­tain their po­si­tion, stat­ing there will be "no move­ment be­fore re­set­tle­ment.”

"The Chief Sec­re­tary in­di­cat­ed that they can on­ly op­er­ate with­in the am­bit of the law, this is on­ly re­gard­ing per­sons on­ly be­ing of­fered cash as com­pen­sa­tion and per­sons on­ly be­ing giv­en leas­es."

Hack­ett says the res­i­dents be­lieve that in spite of the law, the gov­ern­ment's poli­cies can bridge this gap and meet the res­i­dents' needs. She cit­ed two sim­i­lar land ac­qui­si­tion projects in Trinidad at Pi­ar­co and Debe.

"In Debe squat­ters were com­pen­sat­ed with land and mon­ey, sim­i­lar­ly, in Pi­ar­co, a new com­mu­ni­ty was re­built at Orop­une Gar­dens and res­i­dents were re­set­tled be­fore their prop­er­ty was ac­quired.”

Hack­ett al­so said that al­though the gov­ern­ment promised lands at Cove, Shir­van and Cour­land for dis­placed prop­er­ty own­ers, prepa­ra­tion of the land, had not be­gun.

She said the prop­er­ty own­ers al­so still faced the sce­nario of hav­ing to give up their free­hold lands for lands leased by the state.