Dear Editor,
I just returned from the site of another truck with another load of lumber for the foreshore lands, No. 67 Village, that has become a favourite site for squatting and trespassing.
The owner of the house that started a week ago reportedly comes from Orealla. The one before that hails, I am told, from somewhere on the East Coast of Demerara.
A little over two weeks ago (SN 15th December 2012) we reported on the appointment of a new IMC for the local NDC, Nos. 52-74 Villages, drawing attention to the fact that one of the councillors initiated the trespassing in the area. And, since his appointment, a feeding frenzy seems to be underway.
All of this is happening as Minister of the Environment, The Hon. Robert Persaud, instructs the Lands and Surveys Commission (SN 5th January, 2013) to undertake a public inquiry on the matter to determine the ownership of the lands in question. We are pleased at what appears to be the step forward. We are a little disappointed, however, that the Minister’s instructions appear to exclude the need to prevent the trespassing from continuing while the ownership of the land is under consideration.
Nor does it seem to require efforts to prevent further squatting on a “government reserve”.
One way to read this is to see it as the normal slippage that occurs with autonomous bureaucratic agencies innocently allowing the rights of citizen to fall through the cracks, since the one does not always know what the other is doing.
If that is so, what happened to coordination as a necessary element in any system of governance?
Moreover, the slippage theory may be hard to swallow since the two agencies, Lands and Surveys Commission and the Sea Defence Board, with immediate responsibility for the area in question have known about the matter for some time, while the one with direct authority, the Sea Defence Board, refuses to assert its presence.
What also makes the slippage theory suspect is the Board’s silence in the face of its deafening declaration in other parts of the country of a “no tolerance” policy towards squatting on “government reserves”.
Yours faithfully,
Rishee Thakur
