Akash Sama­roo

In 2014, Tech Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed told would-be cus­tomers that if they bought land at their Cen­tral Springs Es­tates in Freeport, it would build all the in­fra­struc­ture need­ed for land ap­provals with­in a year of pur­chase. But those who hand­ed over their mon­ey, some from as far back as when the prop­er­ty was first ad­ver­tised, are still wait­ing for the com­pa­ny to ful­fill its promise.

“I took my re­tire­ment mon­ey and pur­chased land for my son when he got mar­ried so that he could start his fam­i­ly. It’s been three years and they’re still rent­ing an apart­ment,” one landown­er, who asked to re­main anony­mous, said.

An­oth­er said she pur­chased two lots in 2014 at $300,000 each.

“My hus­band and I were just start­ing out in life and this met our bud­get. We al­so knew that the de­vel­op­er had suc­cess in the past with the Riverview Park set­tle­ment in Long­denville, nev­er in a mil­lion years we thought we’d end up in this sit­u­a­tion.”

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site along Raphael Road in Freeport on Mon­day, there was no sign of any con­trac­tor. A watch­man alone pa­trolled the area, keep­ing a keen eye on our ac­tiv­i­ties.

One of the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors, Roshan Ba­boolal, sub­se­quent­ly con­tact­ed us to in­di­cate the con­trac­tor would ac­tu­al­ly be­gin work next week. This was in con­trast to what was said ear­li­er by an­oth­er com­pa­ny of­fi­cial, who de­clared work had start­ed last week. Ba­boolal, how­ev­er, as­sured that the in­fra­struc­tur­al works to al­low for ap­provals will be fin­ished by Jan­u­ary 2023.

But this does not mean ap­provals will be in hand by then, as the process for that will on­ly be­gin on com­ple­tion of the works. In Clause 12 of the sales agree­ment, Tech Con­tract Lim­it­ed said those works en­tail the pro­vi­sion of in­fra­struc­tur­al ameni­ties such as roads, drainage, wa­ter, light­ing and fenc­ing.

Ba­boolal’s lat­est promise has, how­ev­er, in­fu­ri­at­ed some of the landown­ers, who said they have heard this be­fore.

“They are ly­ing,” one woman said curt­ly.

An­oth­er lot own­er said, “From 2015 to now, we have had lit­tle progress, lead­ing own­ers to take out mort­gages to build homes in an­oth­er area, ty­ing up fi­nan­cial as­sets in land which can­not be de­vel­oped by us nor sold un­de­vel­oped.”

She for­ward­ed an up­date sent in March 2022 by the com­pa­ny stat­ing: “Man­age­ment is work­ing to en­sure that the phys­i­cal com­ple­tion of in­fra­struc­tur­al works (not ap­proved ap­pli­ca­tion which may take a cou­ple of months lat­er) of the de­vel­op­ment is pro­ject­ed to be in Sep­tem­ber with the req­ui­site ap­provals from the au­thor­i­ties pri­or to lot own­ers com­menc­ing con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Asked about the rea­sons for the con­tin­ued de­lays, Ba­boolal lay a large por­tion of the blame on the pan­dem­ic and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

“The de­vel­op­ment was go­ing to be done in phas­es. Then pri­or to 2021, WASA changed its rules and they re­quired the en­tire de­vel­op­ment to have ful­ly com­plet­ed in­fra­struc­ture works be­fore any ap­proval can be giv­en, these are their new post-COVID rules,” Ba­boolal said.

Ba­boolal said in the past, if a part of the project was com­plete, ap­proval would have been grant­ed just for that phase.

“Sev­er­al de­vel­op­ers are now go­ing through this same prob­lem.”

Ba­boolal said they are at the “be­hest” of WASA, as they are strug­gling to get the au­thor­i­ty to come to the work site to in­spect the progress. He said they are ex­pect­ed to recom­mence on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022 and com­ple­tion is set for Jan­u­ary 2023.

“So, these things they are rais­ing might be pre­ma­ture be­cause we are al­ready in Au­gust and next four- or five-months things will be com­plet­ed, they’ve reached this far so maybe a lit­tle pa­tience is need­ed.”

Ba­boolal said it was in the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­est to get the project fin­ished, not­ing Cen­tral Springs is at the top of their pri­or­i­ty list.

How­ev­er, a source at the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion said two months is an im­pos­si­ble time­line for the ap­provals in­volved.

“The fi­nal ap­proval they need to get is called De­vel­op­men­tal Fi­nal Per­mit and that takes more than two months be­cause they have to get ap­provals from drainage, fire and WASA and then we will have to send it to a de­part­ment called CMOH that’s in the Min­istry of Health and we have no con­trol how long that will take there, and then it’ll come back to us and we have to do an­oth­er round of site vis­its so they can’t say it’ll take two months, that’s more like four or five months at least.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands eight home­own­ers start­ed le­gal ac­tion with a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent on Ju­ly 22 re­quest­ing dam­ages and le­gal costs.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, at­tor­neys Varun De­bideen and Stephanie Bu­dram, who are rep­re­sent­ing the home­own­ers, said, “These peo­ple are with­out homes to call their own. In fact, some of them are even forced to pay rent for a num­ber of years, which could have been monies used to con­struct their home all be­cause they are not able to take pos­ses­sion of the lands. The de­vel­op­ers con­tin­ue to dis­miss the pur­chasers’ pleas by pro­vid­ing gener­ic an­nu­al up­dates.”

The com­pa­ny has been giv­en un­til Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022, to com­plete works be­fore le­gal pro­ceed­ings be­gin.