Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Ap­pli­ca­tions from a landown­ers group to halt the gov­ern­ment’s ac­qui­si­tion of land for the pur­pose of con­struct­ing a new air­port ter­mi­nal in To­ba­go were dis­missed by the High Court on Fri­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a tweet by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, on Fri­day evening, ap­pli­ca­tions for an in­junc­tion were al­so re­ject­ed by the court, clear­ing the way for the State to con­tin­ue with the “im­por­tant in­fra­struc­ture project.”

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Ho­race Hen­ry, Bev­er­ly Hen­ry, An­dre An­tho­ny, Ar­lon Alexan­der, Owen Melville, Cole Per­cy and Daniel Mc­Dou­gal asked Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo to file an ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view or an in­ter­im junc­tion or stay against the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and NID­CO.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo dis­missed their claims that the land ac­qui­si­tion was in breach of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights as landown­ers.

The court ruled that the state must pay rental as­sis­tance for six of the res­i­dents.

Ho­race Hen­ry was or­dered to re­ceive rental as­sis­tance worth $48,000; An­dre An­tho­ny was or­dered to re­ceive $15,000; Ar­lon Alexan­der was or­dered to re­ceive $48,000; Owen Melville was or­dered to re­ceive $18,000, and Cole Per­cy was or­dered to re­ceive $15,000 in rental sup­port.

The court or­dered the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to pro­vide stor­age to six claimants at NIPDEC’s Ware­house in Shaw Park, To­ba­go—or any oth­er lo­ca­tion agreed to by the par­ties—for six months, at the THA’s ex­pense.

The THA was al­so or­dered to as­sist in the break­ing and re­moval of all struc­tures on the prop­er­ties of all sev­en claimants, as well as to pay the claimants the cost of the court pro­ceed­ings.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Cromp­ston Trace to speak with the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, but they didn’t wish to speak.

The ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­pan­sion Project be­gan in 2020 and the gov­ern­ment hopes it will boost the tourism sec­tor.

It is ex­pect­ed to cost around $1.2 bil­lion.

On Au­gust 11, the evic­tion of res­i­dents from Zone D of the project—lo­cat­ed at Cromp­ton Trace was halt­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly fol­low­ing a le­gal chal­lenge by sev­en home­own­ers.

In Au­gust, To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe said 122 peo­ple ac­cept­ed $210 mil­lion worth of set­tle­ments.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine pre­vi­ous­ly asked the state to work with the res­i­dents of zone D to en­sure that a fair price is paid for their land.

This past week, the THA said it sup­port­ed a six-month evic­tion ex­ten­sion re­quest by res­i­dents of zone D.

The group was ini­tial­ly giv­en un­til Sep­tem­ber 15 to va­cate.