Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of the Sad­dle Vale De­vel­op­ment in San­ta Cruz, are call­ing for swift in­ter­ven­tion from the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SJL­RC).

For months, the in­hab­i­tants of the area have been re­port­ing what they be­lieved was the unau­tho­rised con­struc­tion of a wall and a bridge over a por­tion of a drain by an­oth­er res­i­dent. The res­i­dents are now wor­ried the con­struc­tion of these el­e­ments will prove a flood­ing haz­ard.

“The drain which ac­com­mo­dates wa­ter from Sad­dle Grove and Sad­dle Vale is very small and be­cause of its lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty, start­ed over­flow­ing dur­ing pe­ri­ods of heavy rain once the Sad­dle Grove De­vel­op­ment took place. We al­ready have one fam­i­ly that lost equip­ment from its over­flow­ing.

“The sit­u­a­tion will on­ly get worse with the con­struc­tion of the wall over the drain which will fur­ther re­strict the flow of wa­ter.”

Ac­cord­ing to a let­ter that was signed and sent to the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the SJL­RC, Va­lerie Ham­let Bob­combe on March 2, by the res­i­dents, it was al­leged that an­oth­er res­i­dent was build­ing be­yond his own bor­ders, as was shown on the res­i­dents’ cadas­tral.

The let­ter stat­ed, “The con­struc­tion of a wall over the por­tion of a drain (I.e., the sec­tion which runs from Chico Av­enue to Franklyn Street) which ser­vices the Sad­dle Vale and Sad­dle Grove de­vel­op­ment and a bridge across the drain from the Chico Av­enue side to ac­cess a prop­er­ty which al­ready has an ac­cess from Franklyn Street. The wall and bridge are be­ing con­struct­ed on the drain re­serve...the bound­aries are sev­er­al feet from the drain re­serve.”

The mat­ter was first re­port­ed to the cor­po­ra­tion around March 2022, which put a tem­po­rary stop­per on the con­struc­tion af­ter the site was vis­it­ed by their rep­re­sen­ta­tives. How­ev­er, work was even­tu­al­ly re­sumed.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to coun­cil­lor for the area, Sud­hir Sagram­s­ingh on the mat­ter who stat­ed he was aware of the sit­u­a­tion.

“We in­ves­ti­gat­ed the mat­ter thor­ough­ly and pulled in all par­ties on sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions and asked them to pro­duce their doc­u­men­ta­tion and the gen­tle­man was found to be on the right and op­er­at­ing with­in his bound­aries.”

How­ev­er, res­i­dents said they were nev­er con­tact­ed by Sagram­s­ingh.

Sagram­s­ingh em­pha­sised that the cor­po­ra­tion did not ig­nore the mat­ter.

He said the man was stopped from con­struct­ing on the land, while in­ves­ti­ga­tions were car­ried out.

“He did stop for sev­er­al months. And when the find­ings came back that he was in the right, the build­ing in­spec­tor would have com­mu­ni­cat­ed that to him for­mal­ly, and he would have con­tin­ued his con­struc­tion.”

He al­so said that “even if re­ports reach me, re­ports that has to do with build­ing vi­o­la­tions or any­thing like that, even as the coun­cil, I have no au­thor­i­ty to make any pro­nounce­ments on the mat­ter to say who’s right or wrong.”

He stat­ed that he re­ferred the mat­ter to the build­ing in­spec­torate to in­ves­ti­gate by iden­ti­fy­ing what in­frac­tions of the law had tak­en place.

Up­on in­spec­tion, the coun­cil­l­lor added that “our in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the gen­tle­man was build­ing with­in his rights and with­in his bound­aries. Based on the cadas­tral sheets and the build­ing plans, all his plans are ac­tu­al­ly ap­proved at the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion.”

Re­gard­ing the drains, Sagram­s­ingh not­ed that they were the same size as “what was ini­tial­ly on the orig­i­nal cadas­tral for that piece of prop­er­ty.”

Sagram­s­ingh added that af­ter find­ing out this in­for­ma­tion, he was told by the res­i­dents “they had doc­u­ments con­trary to what the re­port gen­er­at­ed by the build­ing in­spec­torate of the San Juan Laven­tille would have pro­duced for me.”

How­ev­er, he stat­ed that he was re­quired to use the in­for­ma­tion that was pro­duced by the cor­po­ra­tion. De­spite this, due to the doc­u­ments the res­i­dents pos­sessed, in­ves­ti­ga­tions were still in progress.

“So when we heard that they have con­trary doc­u­ments, I told them, OK. And this was just a cou­ple of weeks ago, ac­tu­al­ly. I told them, I said, all right, since we have con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion, I asked the build­ing in­spec­tor to once more re-en­gage the mat­ter and al­so en­gage town and coun­try, be­cause some­times the in­for­ma­tion that town and coun­try will have, there are lit­tle vari­a­tions be­tween that and what our build­ing in­spec­torate in the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion has. It’s gone back to in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

En­gi­neer­ing and Sur­vey­ing Of­fi­cer of the San Juan Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Riyaaz Ramkissoon was al­so con­tact­ed on the mat­ter.

He stat­ed that the res­i­dent was con­tin­u­ing with the work on the prop­er­ty since, “He has ap­proved build­ing plans from the cor­po­ra­tion and from town and coun­try to build.”

Re­gard­ing the dis­par­i­ty with the cadas­trals in pos­ses­sion by the res­i­dents and by town and coun­try, Ramkissoon was asked whether this would force con­struc­tion to cease once more.

In re­sponse to this, he stat­ed sol­id proof was nec­es­sary be­fore con­struc­tion could be halt­ed.

“No, it will not be paused be­cause we have to in­ves­ti­gate it first, we can’t just pause it be­cause of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, be­cause it is one word from an­oth­er. We have to have some kind of proof. To ba­si­cal­ly make some­body stop, we have to have proof to in­di­cate this is what is wrong.”

Sim­i­lar to Sagram­s­ingh, Ramkissoon stat­ed that the mat­ter was cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“The com­plaint was that the wall is be­ing built on the drain re­serve. In the cadas­tral that we have, that was sub­mit­ted to the town and coun­try, that is not the case.

“The res­i­dents sub­mit­ted a next cadas­tral that is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion right now by both the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion and the min­istry.”

The res­i­dents said they could not un­der­stand that al­though the cor­po­ra­tion is now say­ing that the mat­ter is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed they (the cor­po­ra­tion) can­not stop con­struc­tion.

They res­i­dents al­so said that in any giv­en cir­cum­stances where an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is be­ing done, all work should be ceased pend­ing the out­come of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son for a re­sponse on the mat­ter, con­cern­ing the cadas­tral dis­crep­an­cy, but no re­sponse was re­ceived up un­til press time.