Family homeless for Divali Day

WHILE the nation enjoys Divali festivities today, a Palmyra family of four, including a nine-month-old baby, will spend the day searching for a place to live. The family’s home was demolished by four men, accompanied by two policemen and a bailiff yesterday morning, while the owners — Salisha Ramberansingh, 26, and Ervin Patterson, 31, — were at work. When the couple returned home and saw their house and personal belongings being destroyed, they broke down in tears. Patterson, who tried in vain to stop the demolishers, was arrested by police. Up to late yesterday the man was still “being processed” at the Princes Town Police Station and had not yet been charged. When Newsday visited the scene yesterday, relatives said Ram-beransingh was distraught over the incident and had gone to the police station to find out what charges would be laid against her husband. In a telephone interview, Ramberansingh said the police had refused to tell her what charges had been laid against her husband.

“They (the police) say they not telling us. Right now I don’t know what to do. We have nowhere to go and I have a baby,” she cried. Ramberansingh’s cousin Arnold Hosein told Newsday that Patterson, his wife, and children who are aged ten and nine months, have been living on the Caroni 1975 Ltd lands for over ten years. Hosein said the land was initially bought by the couple’s relatives but was later sold to a nearby neighbour. He said for the past few years, the owner of land had been trying to get the family out of the house. He said that Patterson never received a court notice and no kind of documentation was produced by the men who demolished the house yesterday morning. Patterson’s mother Sylvia, 66, recalled that around 10 am, she was in the kitchen of her next-door home when her grand-daughter told her that two policemen and four men were walking up the trace.

“I asked them what is the problem, what they came to do and they say they come to break down the house. I told them that nobody home and they cannot do that. They tell me if I want I could take out the things from the house,” the woman said. The elderly woman said she told them that she could not move out the items, and she was going to get her other son to help her. “By the time I returned, they had already broken down the house,” she said. Sylvia said the men also tied a rope to the couple’s car and pulled it down the hill. The elderly woman said they immediately called her son Patterson, who runs a canteen at the Methanol Five Plant at Point Lisas Industrial Estate, and her daughter who is an assistant secretary at the same plant and told them of the situation. “When they came, the girl (Ramberansingh) just started to cry. Patterson try to stop the men but they say they doh care about any body. They shouldn’t treat people so. What will happen when the ten-year-old son comes from school and sees his home mash up,” she added.