RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With rob­beries on the rise at some Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) sites, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Adri­an Leonce has ad­vised peo­ple to get to know their neigh­bours so they can eas­i­ly de­ter­mine who the crim­i­nals are.

The call comes as Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is an­nounced that the po­lice and army have been de­ployed at some of the new Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion con­struc­tion sites at Cit­rus Grove, St Au­gus­tine and Cau­ra.

Both min­is­ters spoke to re­porters at a dis­tri­b­u­tion of HDC grants and sub­si­dies at the Moru­ga Mul­ti­pur­pose Sport and Youth Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day.

The dis­tri­b­u­tion came just days be­fore the up­com­ing by-elec­tion for the Lengua/In­di­an Walk dis­trict.

De­fend­ing the de­ci­sion to dis­trib­ute the grants so close to the elec­tion, Robin­son-Reg­is ex­plained, “It takes a while for us to go through the pro­ce­dure of vet­ting peo­ple and mak­ing sure they qual­i­fy for these grants and sub­si­dies. It so hap­pens that it is co­in­cid­ing with the by-elec­tion.”

She added, “I am sure no­body want­ed us to wait un­til the elec­tion is fin­ished. We are just do­ing our work.”

MP for Moru­ga, Michelle Ben­jamin, al­so at­tend­ed the func­tion and said the grants should have been dis­trib­uted be­fore the start of the rainy sea­son.

On the is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty, Robin­son-Reg­is said meet­ings had been held with the Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty is­sues at HDC sites.

“We worked out cer­tain strate­gies ... Re­gard­ing new con­struc­tion at Cit­rus Grove, St Au­gus­tine, and Cau­ra, we have the army and po­lice on those sites, and they are main­tain­ing se­cu­ri­ty,” Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is said.

Asked about an in­crease in rob­beries at the HDC’s Ed­in­burgh 500 de­vel­op­ment, Robin­son-Reg­is said, “I know there are con­cerns with ex­ist­ing HDC com­mu­ni­ties, and those are un­der the purview of the po­lice. There will have to be reg­u­lar pa­trols in those ar­eas.”

She said on Mon­day, Leonce met with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to dis­cuss con­cerns.

“We don’t want to re­veal se­cu­ri­ty strate­gies be­cause we don’t want to alert those who might breach se­cu­ri­ty,” she ex­plained.

The min­is­ter said the HDC would be look­ing out for il­le­gal oc­cu­pants.

“We have ramped up evic­tions, and as a con­se­quence, we have been able to move out a num­ber of per­sons who have been oc­cu­py­ing il­le­gal­ly. What has hap­pened is be­cause some of the units have re­mained un­oc­cu­pied, we do have a re­cur­rence of peo­ple mov­ing back in,” the min­is­ter re­vealed.

She al­so said HDC was try­ing to make the emp­ty units “live­able” so they could be oc­cu­pied quick­ly by le­git­i­mate ten­ants.

Mean­while, Leonce said, an­ti-crime strate­gies were be­ing de­ployed in the HDC com­mu­ni­ties. He added it was im­por­tant for res­i­dents to get to know one an­oth­er.

“We are try­ing to en­gage the com­mu­ni­ty, re­al­ly try­ing to get per­sons who are un­em­ployed and may be in­volved in ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties to get to know them bet­ter and un­der­stand their chal­lenges, and ei­ther get them to leave or to par­take in some­thing pos­i­tive,” Leonce ex­plained.

He not­ed that the HDC is con­duct­ing stud­ies in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties and plans to en­gage the com­mu­ni­ty se­ri­ous­ly about these is­sues.