Paying for past sins

Ever since the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) announced its East Port-of-Spain Urban Redevelopment Project, Mr Garcia has been under fire on several fronts. This project will see the relocation of over 2,000 residents of apartment complexes in the area, as well as the closure of various small businesses. These buildings are to be torn down and rebuilt and, while that is happening, the residents are to be relocated to various areas - Chaguanas, Mount Hope, Champs Fleurs, Tunapuna, Oropune, Barataria, Morvant, and Cocorite. Naturally, the residents want to know if they will be able to return to their neighbourhoods after the re-building. And, on this issue, the HDC appears to have been less than upfront.

Addressing a Joint Select Committee of Parliament on Tuesday, Mr Garcia said that the re-development was being done for the people of the area. Thirty percent of the new housing, he said, will be reserved for low-income earners, while the remaining 70 percent will be for persons wishing to own property in east PoS on the basis of the HDC’s allocation policy.

Two questions immediately arise. First, is the 30 percent cited by Mr Garcia sufficient to include all those low-income residents who wish to return? And, if so, will they be returned at the same rents they were paying before? Second, what is the HDC’s “allocation policy”? Will it be based on transparent market principles or secret criteria which will allow political manipulation? This newspaper has frequently pointed to the lack of openness in the way the HDC conducts the business of the people, and the Corporation appears to be continuing this tradition in its handling of the East PoS project.

Indeed, what Mr Garcia told the JSC on Tuesday is at odds with his tune at the beginning of the year when the relocation plan was first announced. Back then, Mr Garcia noted that surveys have revealed the targeted areas to have some of the highest crime rates in the country — the implication being that the re-building and relocation of residents was really part of the Government’s crime-fighting initiative. If this is so — if the Government’s real intention is to break up the neighbourhoods — then they should be upfront about it. After all, it is not impossible to persuade residents to move permanently. But problems inevitably arise if the authorities are trying to hoodwink citizens. Mr Garcia, for example, has claimed umpteen times that consultations have taken place with everyone, even going so far on one occasion to say that 92 percent of the persons affected were supporting the Government’s move. However, one spokesperson for the residents refuted this, saying that Mr Garcia had pulled this figure from the number of persons who had signed an attendance sheet for a meeting called by the HDC. And, after the JSC meeting, business people from the area also denied Mr Garcia’s assertion that they had been consulted.

Whether this is so or not, it certainly seems peculiar, if the HDC really has the overwhelming majority support claimed by Mr Garcia, that the Corporation has gone on an expensive print and electronic advertising campaign to persuade the public that most residents are in favour of the project.

The fact is, this whole issue has been badly handled by the HDC, and it has been badly handled because of the Corporation’s typical lack of transparency and what appears to be an attempt to manipulate citizens. This newspaper supports, in principle, the rebuilding of east PoS. But the Government must realise that it cannot simply uproot people, especially since the social and infrastructural problems being tackled are the direct result of Government policies over the past 50 years. If the present PNM administration must pay for the sins of past ones, then that is how it must be.