Even as a legal battle looms, the government remains adamant that it will not compensate a handful of Mocha, East Bank Demerara squatters who refused its initial offer and instead unleashed mayhem in their refusal to relocate.
Attorney General, Anil Nandlall on Tuesday said the government is prepared to go to court over the matter.
“The matter will have to go to the court and the court will have to decide.
“There is no other principle to which one can justify this request (for compensation) at this late stage,” Nandlall said in his Tuesday night ‘Issues in the News’ commentary aired live on his Facebook page.
The hesitancy to compensate comes after the government spent months engaging the squatters and then doling out some $265 million in cash compensation along with the allocation of new house lots and ready-made houses to over 20 families that once squatted on lands earmarked for road construction.
While the majority of squatters relocated and accepted the government’s compensation, a handful of squatters refused, forcing the government to demolish their houses.
These squatters are now asking for compensation and their lawyers have written the government seeking mediation.
The government has since refused and the squatters have now instructed their lawyers to commence legal proceedings.
“I’m not sure what’s there to mediate about,” a chuckling Nandlall said.
He reminded that these are persons who were well aware that they were trespassing on lands earmarked for development since 2008 when they were engaged.
In 2021, they were re-engaged, and “they were offered house and land with title [and] they refused. They were offered compensation to move, they were offered compensation for any property damaged and they refused,” Nandlall said.
And so, the Attorney General said, as a consequence, the government has refused to engage in mediation now.
“What principle of law are you relying on that will justify compensation now?
“What the government was offering to you was given gratuitously. That is not what you were entitled to.”
The Housing Ministry on January 05, managed to successfully demolish all illegal structures at Mocha / Cane View, East Bank Demerara that were in the path of the four-lane highway from Eccles to Great Diamond.
It was a tense situation in the community as just seven defiant squatters reportedly set an excavator on fire using channa bombs during the demolition exercise.
Police fired tear gas and the stand-off between the authorities and the squatters lasted for hours. In the end, four of the seven squatters who refused to relocate accepted the government’s offer to occupy move-in ready, single flat two-bedroom houses at Diamond.
Joyann Alexis Ellis, Mark Gordan, Leon Liefde and Lovella Doris accepted the offer.
Three other squatters, Junior Ellis, Anneita Beaton and Sheldon Eastman refused to relocate and demanded millions of dollars and farmlands from the government.
