Af­ter four years of failed ne­go­ti­a­tions, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, yes­ter­day, de­stroyed a gar­den oc­cu­pied by three farm­ers at #2 Sa­van­nah, Diego Mar­tin.

Ac­cord­ing to Ude­cott, the three oc­cu­piers were there il­le­gal­ly. But the farm­ers, who cried for help, told Guardian Me­dia that they have been farm­ing there for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 years.

“I am heart­bro­ken and in sor­row to see our labour for so much years...what this Gov­ern­ment is do­ing to us, it hurt­ing my heart, my heart break­ing but I putting it to my mak­er,” farmer An­gela Thomas cried.

She said farm­ers de­serve com­pen­sa­tion for the work they have done in the last half-cen­tu­ry. She lament­ed that all their cries for a re­prieve fell on deaf ears.

In a press re­lease, Ude­cott said the de­mo­li­tion was nec­es­sary as they pre­pared for the con­struc­tion of Phase 2 of Diego Mar­tin Sport­ing Com­plex which will com­ple­ment Phase 1 and strate­gi­cal­ly pro­vide ed­u­ca­tion­al, sport­ing and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties for the com­mu­ni­ty, in­clu­sive of a home-work cen­tre; chil­dren’s play park; com­mu­ni­ty play­field; two (2) mul­ti-pur­pose hard courts; a swim­ming pool; a pavil­ion; pub­lic wash­rooms; and an elec­tri­cal kiosk.

If un­in­ter­rupt­ed, Ude­COTT said the com­mu­ni­ty would be able to en­joy the use of the home­work cen­tre, play­field and hard courts by De­cem­ber 2025.

The cor­po­ra­tion not­ed that its of­fi­cials ap­proached the farm­ers in 2020 and al­ter­na­tive parcels of land were found in Tuck­er Val­ley to fa­cil­i­tate re­lo­ca­tions. The crops were al­so val­ued to pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion.

They said talks re­sumed in 2024 and one of the oc­cu­piers ac­cept­ed the of­fer of a par­cel of land and com­pen­sa­tion for his crops. But the oth­ers re­quest­ed ex­or­bi­tant sums of over $1.1 mil­lion each.

But farmer Ca­ma­lyn Sa­landy said they work hard to cul­ti­vate their crops, which were bear­ing when the de­mo­li­tion be­gan. She ac­cused Ude­cott of not car­ing.

“It’s heart­break­ing, it’s heart­break­ing be­cause at the end of the day we have chil­dren to feed from this and this is where our liveli­hood come from,” Sa­landy ex­plained.

She added that the land of­fered was in a de­plorable con­di­tion and they just could not ac­cept it.

“It have no run­ning wa­ter fa­cil­i­ty there, no elec­tric­i­ty and it is very out of our reach to get down there and the con­di­tion wasn’t met to our sat­is­fac­tion,” she claimed.

Sa­landy added that they were not against the Gov­ern­ment’s plan for the land but they de­serve bet­ter treat­ment.

She al­so wor­ried about the fu­ture of her 19-year-old son, who she said took up farm­ing to stay away from the bad in­flu­ences in the com­mu­ni­ty.