Vendors of Friendship Squatting Area, East Bank Demerara have complained bitterly about having to remove their stalls from the front of a street leading into the area where they live.
The residents say the land is government reserve, but the Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) says that it is privately owned.
The residents were given notice by the NDC several weeks ago to remove their stalls from the head of a dam not far away from the Friendship Community High School since the stalls are on privately owned land, Overseer of the Caledonia/Good Success NDC, Raghunandan Singh, told Stabroek News.
Singh said the land, which formerly belonged to Macorp, is now owned by Wooed Phillip of Alabama Trading who is developing the land.
He has proceeded to put up a fence and is digging a trench alongside the fence that is running directly to where the stalls are.
When Stabroek News contacted Phillip he said he did not understand residents’ fuss because the land was his “bona fide property. They are not squatting on government reserve, that is my land and I’m entitled to do as I please with it.”
Phillip said that he has installed drainage on his land which should help also to drain the community aback of his land.
In the meantime the vendors told Stabroek News that they understand that they have no exclusive rights to the land but at the same time their shops serve as their livelihood; farmers and craftsmen of the community sell their products at the shops.
Some of the residents have complied with the notices since they do not want their materials to be destroyed if there is a demolition exercise. “I tek a day off from work after I get the 72 hours notice,” Jermaine Manifold, who has had his stall there for almost four years now, said.
Another woman has moved hers and is now paying $8,000 per month for another place to do her small business.
Michael Alleyne told this newspaper that he sources bamboo for his craftwork from the area that is now fenced.
Another concern of the residents was that there was not enough space left now to build a road if and when their community was regularised. Singh said however that if the community was regularized the main access road will not be where residents say but farther south, where there is more than enough space and a loam road is already made.
Singh also told Stabroek News that among the reasons for removing the squatters was that they were there illegally in the first place; He said some young men would normally hang out at the shops and interfere with young women who passed on their way to and from school.
Singh said too that the NDC is willing to work along with the residents to find alternative solutions after the removal of their stands.
