Charles Kong Soo

The dis­af­fect­ed res­i­dents who were served evic­tion no­tices over the planned de­vel­op­ment of the Curepe in­ter­change say the Gov­ern­ment is us­ing de­lay­ing tac­tics to frus­trate them con­cern­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of their land.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, spokesman for the res­i­dents, Ru­di Singh said, “Since we got a let­ter from Gov­ern­ment to va­cate, as they say, it was not an evic­tion let­ter, but we have to move in 15 days. Sub­se­quent to that, we had a meet­ing with Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan at his of­fice in Port-of-Spain on Sep­tem­ber 13, they said they were not go­ing to forcibly put us out, they will wait un­til the process goes through or un­til the Sec­tion 4 no­tice ex­pires in No­vem­ber."

The Min­istry said the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act con­sist­ed of a two-step process that en­tailed serv­ing a Sec­tion 3 no­tice of in­tend­ed ac­qui­si­tion, fol­lowed by a Sec­tion 4 or­der which em­pow­ered the State to en­ter and take pos­ses­sion of the prop­er­ties with­in six months of serv­ing the no­tice.

He said no ne­go­ti­a­tions were held since the res­i­dents' lawyers sent the min­istry a let­ter. The min­istry's lawyers re­spond­ed on Sep­tem­ber 18 that they still were not com­plet­ed with the in­struc­tions from their client, the Gov­ern­ment. Once the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed, they said, they will re­ply on Sep­tem­ber 21. To date, there has been no re­sponse.

Singh said they al­so want­ed to know who on the Gov­ern­ment side had promised the res­i­dents' land, what time pe­ri­od and lo­ca­tion. He said, how­ev­er, that was a sec­ondary is­sue. The pri­ma­ry is­sue was the ne­go­ti­a­tions con­cern­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of the land.

Singh said min­istry of­fi­cials al­ways said the land is­sue was some­thing to ac­com­mo­date the res­i­dents and would be done sep­a­rate­ly.

Singh said it seemed to the res­i­dents that Gov­ern­ment was de­lay­ing the whole process to force an is­sue of evict­ing the res­i­dents when Sec­tion 4 ex­pired in No­vem­ber.

He said they ver­bal­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Sinanan and Di­rec­tor of High­ways Navin Ram­s­ingh at the meet­ing to put their of­fer in writ­ing.

Singh said Gov­ern­ment's stonewalling tac­tics made it look like res­i­dents were not mov­ing for­ward or do­ing any­thing.