Residents of the Success Squatting Area are refusing to budge even as the area is being flooded by NICIL in a bid to dislodge them so as to facilitate planting in the abandoned sugar cane fields.
When Stabroek News visited yesterday, the embankments at the far end of the squatting area were being broken by an excavator to allow for the process to begin, while dozens of anxious residents kept arriving and leaving during this time. Some persons tried engaging the police officers who were standing guard but the officers did not respond. Water from sections of two canals behind the officers had already risen to the brim of the embankment, while there was some overtopping in other areas.
Yet, despite the warning of the impending flooding, a number of persons were seen going about their construction as normal. Other residents were seen weeding with brush cutters and one man who hadn’t yet built anything told this newspaper that he had found a piece of land for himself and his family as well as another piece nearby for his adult daughter. He added that he was on his way to do a bit of cleaning. Walking away, he muttered that he had applied for housing in 2004 and was tired of having to pay rent.
A taxi driver (name undisclosed) argued that people have decided to squat because they had nowhere else to live. The man pointed out that a large percentage of the residents are single mothers with children.
According to the driver, the women and their families were leading peaceful lives until outsiders who already have their places of abode arrived and began advertising land for sale on Facebook. This, he noted, led to many persons settling in the squatting area in the months to follow.
However, another person commented that in fact it was the woman that was arrested by the police on the first day of the standoff who was responsible for the selling of the lands. The woman herself was said to have occupied a piece of land in the squatting area.
The taxi driver explained that prior to moving here he lived in North East La Penitence, Georgetown, where he paid $5,000 a week for a studio apartment which would total $20,000 a month. He has been living in the area for two months. According to the man, he was managing just fine paying his rent, taking care of his family and paying his utility bills. However, he began noticing that due to the pandemic, and with persons being laid off from their jobs, unemployed persons were also operating taxis which made it harder to get passengers as if it was not already difficult enough getting passengers during a lockdown.
“I trying to mek a living. Me ain’t mind paying for the land because I want to own something. I want to pay for it,” he asserted. The man said that he applied for land back in 2001. During his nineteen years of waiting, the driver said he had become a grandfather.
While some residents were busy doing construction, others raised their houses on stilts to prepare for the flooding as they did not intend to move, come what may.
“First them did saying this is NICIL land, now today the police telling we is the government land. I come and meet a set of people here looking on, then like five minutes after the police reach and the police come and said this is government property and that we must remove. Them ask me what I doing here and I tell them, I occupying a piece of land over here,” another resident who asked to remain anonymous said.
Scores of residents as they learnt of the flooding at the back of the squatting area arrived by buses, taxis and horse carts to observe what was taking place but no one showed any intention of leaving.
Attempts to contact the interim CEO of NICIL, Radha Krishna Sharma, proved futile.
