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Educate people of the evils of squatting
Dear Editor,
It is very necessary that squatters and would-be squatters are educated as to the evils of squatting and, in this regard, the courts and the media need to do more.
Mr. Edmunds, in his recent letter, offered some legal education to squatters and would-be squatters. He pointed out:
(a) The transported owner of a property does not have to prove his ownership. It is the squatter who has to prove his case by hard facts and not by waffling claims which are groundless.
The courts have become more exacting about proof and always reiterate that making an assertion is not proof.
(b) The squatter must never lie to the court. If a prescriptive rights claimant is discovered to tell one lie, then his case is immediately negated by the judge; this is standard procedure.
(c) Squatters must know that if they build structures on someone else’s land, they are running a risk, as the transported owner (including the State), becomes the owner of the structure. Building on someone else’s land doesn’t make you the owner.
There are other information which the would-be squatter need to know:
Squatting is not something which the courts and judges like. The Government is determined to stamp it out and the courts are serious in executing the law.
Claiming poverty is no justification for squatting. I have heard a law-officer remark that poverty does not justify theft and other crimes. If poverty was used to justify crime, there would be no law. Squatters, in trying to fool people and invoke sympathy, usually say “I have nowhere else to go!”
When law officers and others ask them from whence they came before they attempted to squat, they become silent.
Many of these squatters have properties which they rent out, and once they are firmly ordered to get off the land on which they are squatting, they soon return from whence they came.
The courts do not regard “I have nowhere else to go” as either fact or Law.
If squatters or would-be squatters wish land and not to steal or speculate, they need to apply to the Ministry of Housing for house lots or the Lands and Surveys office for leases of State lands.
Lindon S. Carew
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