The remaining Mocha squatters in the path of a major East Bank Demerara road experienced a sombre Christmas as they are uncertain about what will happen next.
So far they have chosen to remain fixed in their position that the Minister of Housing and Water should do a revaluation on their existing structures.
Stabroek News visited the area on Friday and engaged with Anita Beaton. “I don’t have Christmas. I was at the office [ministry] two days ago, I was supposed to get a farm land for my cattle and I don’t know what happen. Also I told them that the price for the property two years ago is not the price for it now, they need to do another valuation. The money they offering cannot build back the house and also I have a business,” the woman lamented.
Beaton maintained that the families are willing to move if they are compensated properly. The woman also pointed out that the remaining families are commercial business owners and use their properties for their livelihoods.
The families remaining have been identified as those of Joyann Alexis Ellis, Mark Gordon, Junior Ellis, Abigail Ifill, and Anneita Beaton.
The Ministry of Housing and Water, one month ago, had offered houses in the Little Diamond Housing Scheme, on the East Bank of Demerara, to the squatters remaining at Mocha, while warning that their homes would be demolished if they did not remove from the path of the major road project.
According to the notice from the ministry that was published in this newspaper, it is prepared and has available “move-in-ready, single-flat two-bedroom housing units” for the squatters, whom it identified as five families.
The notice stated that the squatters were given two-week final notices from November 5 but these had all been ignored. “Every effort by the Ministry has been met with harsh, baseless and irrational resistance,” it added, while noting that like others, the squatters had been offered full compensation for their properties, a free residential house lot and a grace period for the construction of their new homes. “These offers have been rejected on all fronts,” it said.
In its notice to the squatters, the ministry said more than 20 families have relocated to nearby residential areas and have built new homes through government compensation.
The Mocha squatters are in the path of a link for the Eccles to Great Diamond Highway, which is expected to ease traffic congestion for thousands along the East Bank Demerara corridor.
