Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and Ma­yaro Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rush­ton Paray con­tin­ue to butt heads over their views on the coun­try’s squat­ting prob­lem.

It fol­lows the re­cent de­mo­li­tion of a dozen il­le­gal struc­tures lo­cat­ed at Ram­jat­tan Trace, off Tumpuna Road, La Hor­quet­ta, last week.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day, de­bris on the street was ev­i­dence enough of where squat­ters used to re­side be­fore the de­mo­li­tion on Feb­ru­ary 6.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Robin­son-Reg­is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject­ed Paray’s claim that Gov­ern­ment has not im­ple­ment­ed poli­cies to ad­dress squat­ting.

She al­so called out a me­dia house (Trinidad Ex­press) for, what she called, mis­lead­ing the pub­lic via its ed­i­to­r­i­al with claims that Gov­ern­ment is fail­ing to pro­vide ad­e­quate hous­ing so­lu­tions.

Fir­ing back, she said Gov­ern­ment has es­tab­lished leg­isla­tive frame­works to tack­le squat­ting sus­tain­ably.

Al­so at­tempt­ing to clear the air on the is­sue of con­flict­ing own­er­ship—whether the land be­longs to pri­vate en­ti­ties like Cli­co and Home Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed (HCL) or the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, she said that holds no weight since squat­ting is a vi­o­la­tion of the law re­gard­less of own­er­ship.

The min­is­ter said Gov­ern­ment has been do­ing its part in pro­vid­ing hous­ing.

“The Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment has been at the fore­front of struc­tured, sus­tain­able, and le­gal hous­ing ini­tia­tives, en­sur­ing that low- and mid­dle-in­come fam­i­lies have ac­cess to af­ford­able homes. In fis­cal year 2024 alone, the Gov­ern­ment dis­bursed Home Im­prove­ment Grants ben­e­fit­ing around 800 house­holds. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it pro­vid­ed rough­ly 450 Home Im­prove­ment Sub­si­dies, 163 Home Con­struc­tion Sub­si­dies, and starter homes un­der the Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme (HVIP) to about 103 fam­i­lies in need. The Gov­ern­ment has al­so part­nered with the pri­vate sec­tor to ex­pand hous­ing ac­cess.

“Both the ed­i­to­r­i­al and MP Paray’s ar­ti­cle ir­re­spon­si­bly down­play the se­ri­ous­ness of squat­ting and mis­rep­re­sent the Gov­ern­ment’s or­gan­ised poli­cies on the is­sue. Squat­ting is il­le­gal, with many in­di­vid­u­als know­ing­ly oc­cu­py­ing state lands de­spite evic­tion no­tices. MP Paray’s claim that the Gov­ern­ment has not im­ple­ment­ed poli­cies to ad­dress squat­ting is mis­lead­ing,” she said.

How­ev­er, Paray dou­bled down on his crit­i­cism ac­cus­ing Robin­son-Reg­is of mak­ing noth­ing more than ex­cus­es as he con­demned her for ne­glect­ing the 60,000 squat­ting fam­i­lies across the coun­try.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, he said the gov­ern­ment is “quick to bull­doze but slow to build hous­es” for those in need.

“She talks about a few scat­tered hous­ing grants and sub­si­dies, but the re­al­i­ty is this, 60,000 squat­ting fam­i­lies across this coun­try have no part to land own­er­ship. They live un­der the con­stant threat of de­mo­li­tion while wait­ing years for hous­ing re­lief.

“The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion is sit­ting on a wait­ing list of tens of thou­sands of cit­i­zens yet the min­is­ter of­fers no re­al so­lu­tion to re­duc­ing that back­log,” Paray said.