RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Two at­tor­neys have come for­ward to as­sist Faith No­ray, a preg­nant woman, and 11 oth­ers who were evict­ed from their homes in San Fer­nan­do, by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) last Thurs­day.

The res­i­dents claim the homes and the land where they are lo­cat­ed are not owned by the HDC.

Mick­ela Pan­day, leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, and a team com­pris­ing Michelle An­toine, Afi­fah Mo­hammed, and Ake­ba Wil­son, vis­it­ed the fam­i­lies and of­fered sup­port and guid­ance. She ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the man­ner of the evic­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for No­ray, who is due to give birth next week.

“What right and au­thor­i­ty does the HDC have? I don’t know, so I can’t give an an­swer. What I do know is that this is not an HDC de­vel­op­ment, and these res­i­dents have been here for a long time,” she asked

Pan­day said she did not know the de­tails of the in­ci­dent and could not of­fer le­gal coun­sel un­til an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was done. She said if the res­i­dents were slat­ed to be re­lo­cat­ed, it should have been done in a fair and just man­ner.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Sean Sobers has al­so stepped for­ward to as­sist, while Mara­bel­la West Coun­cil­lor John Michael Al­i­bo­cas, who has sub­mit­ted his nom­i­na­tion to con­test the San Fer­nan­do West seat for the UNC, said the evict­ed res­i­dents reached out to him on Sat­ur­day.

“I re­ceived nu­mer­ous phone calls from per­sons in Em­ba­cadere, In­de­pen­dence Av­enue, and La­dy Hailes Av­enue, in­form­ing me that they had been evict­ed from their homes, which some of them have lived in for over 20 years. Grow­ing up with some of these per­sons, I im­me­di­ate­ly went to see them and at­tempt­ed to help with their cir­cum­stances,” Al­i­bo­cas said.

“What was most heart­break­ing for me was the evic­tion of a preg­nant woman and many ten­der-aged chil­dren.”

Al­i­bo­cas said he took videos and pic­tures of the res­i­dents’ be­long­ings, as well as their doc­u­ments, and hand­ed every­thing over to lawyers at­tached to the UNC to de­ter­mine what ac­tion could be tak­en.

“This is tru­ly un­for­tu­nate and heart-wrench­ing, as we are in the rainy sea­son, and these peo­ple have lost one of their most ba­sic hu­man rights, which is a roof over their heads,” he said.

One of the evict­ed res­i­dents, Nar­ine Ram­cha­ran, said the evic­tion no­tices served by the HDC did not have the cor­rect ad­dress­es, rais­ing ques­tions about the le­git­i­ma­cy of the process.