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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Homes on Trintopec land demolished

Owners in tears, angry

by

Kevon Felmine
2430 days ago
20181119

Af­ter toil­ing in the Trin­mar tank farms for the past decade, An­tho­ny Aqui will be one of those with­out a job come De­cem­ber 1 as a re­sult of the im­pend­ing clo­sure of Petrotrin. But Aqui was brought to tears yes­ter­day when the San­ta Flo­ra home he had pumped thou­sands of dol­lars in­to for his chil­dren was re­duced to rub­ble by a con­trac­tor who de­mol­ished his and sev­er­al oth­er homes in the com­mu­ni­ty. Two more homes are ex­pect­ed to be de­mol­ished to­day on the or­der of Petrotirn man­age­ment.

From about 9 am, dump trucks and an ex­ca­va­tor rolled in­to La Vic­to­ria Street, San­ta Flo­ra, de­mol­ish­ing homes that fam­i­lies once oc­cu­pied. There were scenes as grief as some res­i­dents had to rush home from work on­ly to find the struc­tures al­ready de­stroyed.

As emo­tions ran high the res­i­dents blocked the ex­ca­va­tors, caus­ing po­lice to clear the scene. Even the de­mo­li­tion crew ex­pressed sad­ness at hav­ing to de­stroy the homes but said they were op­er­at­ing on or­ders.

One young­ster was al­most ar­rest­ed for us­ing ob­scene lan­guage, but of­fi­cers let him off with a warn­ing af­ter res­i­dents made an ap­peal on his be­half.

Aqui, who was one of the res­i­dents try­ing to quell a show­down, ex­plod­ed when the ex­ca­va­tors start­ed rip­ping apart the foun­da­tion and pil­lars of the home he had start­ed to build for his two chil­dren. They cur­rent­ly live in a ply­wood house next to the foun­da­tion which he said was con­stant­ly un­der threat of col­laps­ing be­cause of flood­ing.

“I am fin­ish­ing work on the 30th and when Trin­mar is gone there is noth­ing for me. This re­al hurt­ing me be­cause I sac­ri­ficed my life for my fam­i­ly.

“I live here with my two chil­dren, their moth­er is gone, my daugh­ter is in the fi­nal year of school and in­stead of pick­ing up a crime, I worked hard to start this foun­da­tion. This cost me more than $40,000 and now they mash it up like it is noth­ing,” Aqui said.

He said over a decade ago a for­mer Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (PSAEL) work­er as­sured him he could be com­fort­able on the land. He said sev­er­al years lat­er he ap­proached the com­pa­ny to pur­chase the land but has been giv­en the run-around. Last year, he re­ceived a let­ter say­ing he was re­quired to move but there was no date and in­di­ca­tion there would be any de­mo­li­tion.

Mar­cus But­ler scratched his head when asked what he would tell his six-year-old son two-year-old daugh­ter when they re­turned from school and day­care and re­alised there was no more home.

But­ler, a con­struc­tion labour­er, said he was at work on a site in San Fer­nan­do when some­one con­tact­ed his fore­man in­di­cat­ing his house was be­ing de­stroyed. When he re­turned home, he on­ly met the ru­ins of his home.

“They didn’t take any­thing out of my house, they just broke it down with every­thing in­side. I had my tank un­der a shed and it is mashed up now,” But­ler said.

“When I came down here every­thing was ex­posed and they told me I have to wait 30 days to get back what­ev­er they took be­cause my ma­te­r­i­al is go­ing quite San­do. I have noth­ing right now, they broke down my house with every­thing in it. I called my wife and she was cry­ing. I don’t know what to do now be­cause I am still ow­ing the cred­it union for my house.”

Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Vic­tor Roberts said po­lice and Petrotrin se­cu­ri­ty in­di­cat­ed they had in­struc­tions to de­mol­ish six hous­es on the street. Roberts said de­spite home­own­ers not be­ing home at the time the con­trac­tor, with­out pa­per­work, broke down the hous­es. He said based on the in­for­ma­tion he re­ceived, the lands will be giv­en to re­trenched Petrotrin em­ploy­ees as part of their sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages.

The res­i­dents, some of whom have lived in the com­mu­ni­ty for over 30 years, were told they were squat­ting on lands owned by Trin­topec, one of two com­pa­nies that merged to form Petrotrin. How­ev­er, a Petrotrin in­sid­er said not all Trin­topec as­sets were vest­ed in­to Petrotrin and as such is still owned by Trin­topec, a lega­cy com­pa­ny whose lands are man­aged by the PSAEL. Ef­forts to con­tact PSAEL yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.


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