Hi-rise project over former cemetery

RESIDENTS of Canaan Street, La Romaine as well as their MP Diane Seukeran, are up in arms over a government decision to build a 16-unit high-rise housing settlement smack dab on top of a cemetery in the area. “While it is not unusual for old burial sites to be utilised for housing, whether privately or publicly, this one calls for further investigation,” Seukeran said when contacted by Newsday on the issue. The housing project, undertaken by the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UDeCOTT), is on a site which was once a public cemetery and which is the final resting place for dozens of people who lived in the area, once a prominent, thriving sugarcane estate during colonial times. Excavation work at the site, last week turned up dozens of skulls, bones and even coffins of people buried there, some buried within the past 30 years. Police had to be called out at the site when construction workers dug up the skeletal remains.

The project was halted as detectives from the San Fernando CID, interviewed nearby residents. The eerie scene caused panic among Canaan Street residents who told Newsday they remained indoors for all of last week, while bones, skulls and rotted pieces of coffins were loaded onto trucks. Yesterday, UDeCOTT’s chief executive officer Winston Agard, confrmed that the company’s construction workers unearthed the remains of the dead. “We did in fact unearth bones and skulls, but the matter has been resolved. We believe construction will continue,” Agard said. But Seukeran, in whose constituency the  apartment buildings are being constructed, expressed her shock and horror when told of the disturbance to the dead. “I will have to look into this issue...this one calls for further investigation,” Seukeran said. When Newsday visited the site yesterday, excavation work was well underway, but workers were skeptical about talking of their encounter with the dead.

“Yes, we get about one hundred pieces of bones and skulls. Yes there were coffins also,” one employee commented. Excavation work for the laying of iron and steel foundations, was being done a mere five feet from a very large tomb which bears the remains of British sugar estate owner Sir Norman Lamont, born in 1869. The markings on the tombstone state: “Died at the Colonial Hospital San Fernando on September 3, 1949”. The tomb bears a triple grave which also includes the remains of British Estate owners John Lamont and Royden Lamont. Canaan Street residents are displeased about the burial ground being excavated and cleared to make way for the modern housing complex. Elderly resident, Elvira Ransome, 78, told Newsday the last burial on the site took place about 36 years ago.  Checks revealed that Palmiste Development is one of the registered owners of the site. However, it was sold to a private owner who recently sold it to the State.