East PoS move a done deal

The experience was both intimidating and superficially informative. The essence of the discourse was to inform me of pre-designated areas, identified by the HDC, for relocation purposes — Mt Hope, Champ Fleurs, El Dorado, Tunapuna, Almond Drive, Edison (Chaguanas), Ramgoolie Trace and Barataria.

As stated in the HDC letter to me, Mr Charles Bourgeois conducted the so-called interview. There was really no discussion as the letter suggested, I was asked if I had to move which of the above was my preference, from a list shown to me. At the end of the session I was asked to sign a form which indicated my answer to the mono question. One therefore got the impression that moving was inevitable and a done deal in which residents had no choice. In fact the whole exercise was conducted in a manner to suggest that tenants had no rights.

I attended several meetings called by the HDC and not once did any official indicate that residents can object.

Or that consultations were a legal requirement of the Slums Clearance Act; or that all of this had to take place before the Minister can agree to a plan. Incidentally, can anyone in their right minds consider east Port-of-Spain a slum?

Here we have a whole community is being plunged into future uncertainty, social turmoil, depression, anxiety, and economic retrogression, while Mr Rowley and Mr Garcia talk and act as if these considerations are irrelevant to the so-called “greater good” of redevelopment. Thank God the recalcitrance and opposition of residents have caused seepage of some of the information that was never, and should have been, revealed to us about the “process” we must chance our future to.

We have retained legal counsel and have galvanised ourselves under the “Is We Community Developers” so we know that we can object — over 200 of us have done so. We know now that the proposed action of the HDC is illegal and challengeable in the Courts. We know now that the expensive 75 million dollar refurbishment just before the 2002 general elections was temporary, and not permanent as we were led to believe then. Why else would some of us spend hard earned money in air-conditioning and generally improving the internals of our respective apartments?

The agitation of residents’ insistence on more information also rendered as highly impossible the claim by HDC that we owe about $200 million in rent.

I am a diabetic, and moving is not an option, as is the case with the dozens of senior citizens and children who are close to medical facilities, schools, friends, families and neighbours in independent community relations no different to other poor communities in the country. Development without relocation is the preferred method of approach. The current approach is a bourgeois attitude in which the proletarians have no say.