Rhon­dor Dowlat

Ten­ants at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s Clifton Tow­ers in Port-of-Spain are call­ing for per­ma­nent se­cu­ri­ty in and around the com­pound, say­ing they are now liv­ing in con­stant fear of bul­ly­ing and reprisal at­tacks by gang mem­bers af­ter the HDC evict­ed il­le­gal ten­ants from the site.

The is­sue was ad­dressed on Fri­day in the Par­lia­ment by Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, who told the House po­lice and De­fence Force mem­bers had evict­ed il­le­gal ten­ants twice from the four-tow­er de­vel­op­ment, fol­low­ing com­plaints of un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty and il­le­gal apart­ment oc­cu­pa­tion.

Po­lice and sol­diers ar­rest­ed and evict­ed 15 peo­ple and the com­pound is now be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored, Mitchell said. (See page A8)

But speak­ing un­der strict anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, ten­ants told the T&T Guardian they fear for their lives as some of them are be­ing la­belled as “in­for­mants” and now their lives are be­ing threat­ened by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

One ten­ant, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said they are the high­est pay­ing ten­ants in all of PoS, at $800 a month. He said ini­tial­ly there was se­cu­ri­ty for the project but that was stopped years ago.

“With that mon­ey we ought to be get­ting se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel here, but they moved out the se­cu­ri­ty years ago and it’s years now we are try­ing to get HDC to put back se­cu­ri­ty here for our safe­ty,” the ten­ant said.

“It is re­al­ly the HDC fault now that the sit­u­a­tion reach where it reach with gang peo­ple mov­ing in and bul­ly­ing us, threat­en­ing us, beat­ing us and in­flu­enc­ing our chil­dren. They sell­ing drugs…all kinds of rack­et go­ing on here and like the peo­ple in Gov­ern­ment afraid to stand up against them.”

The res­i­dents had al­so com­plained to for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and for­mer HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John about their is­sues dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship rule and not­ed it would on­ly get worse. The ten­ants back then al­so called for the es­tab­lish­ment of sev­er­al pro­grammes, in­clud­ing home­work su­per­vi­sion, a day­care, gym, an adult train­ing fa­cil­i­ty and meet­ing rooms.

But John ad­vised the ten­ants then to form a res­i­dents’ as­so­ci­a­tion to over­see the main­te­nance, se­cu­ri­ty, op­er­a­tions and com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions of the en­tire de­vel­op­ment. The ten­ants were al­so ad­vised to set up neigh­bour­hood watch sys­tems and to de­vel­op a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the po­lice sta­tion with­in the dis­trict.

Speak­ing about the re­sponse back then, a ten­ant yes­ter­day said: “It is like they throw us to the wolves out there years ago when we are pay­ing a rent here and HDC is the one who are sup­posed to be main­tain­ing here and pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty for us. How could they ask us to do that for our­selves when we pay­ing them for a ser­vice and to live here?”

Ten­ants al­so claimed that there are ad­verse plumb­ing is­sues, leaks and in­fra­struc­tur­al dam­age and called on the cur­rent HDC man­age­ment to deal with their is­sues.

“We want HDC to move in and see about up­grades and re­pairs and put back se­cu­ri­ty for us be­cause it is their fault that we are in this ug­ly sit­u­a­tion,” on ten­ant added.

Ques­tions sent to the cur­rent HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent Lyons on the on­go­ing is­sue have gone unan­swered.