TRESPASSING!

Apr 29, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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One guy left his home in Guyana and went overseas to live. One day he decided to return home and thought that it would be nice if he asked one of his new overseas friends to accompany him back home.
The friend was keen to see this South American country but not being a man of great means, asked where he was going to stay on his trip.
The Guyanese man told him not to worry that he had a fully furnished home which he had left unoccupied in Guyana and that all that was required when they came back would have been some sweeping and they would be very comfortable.
The two friends departed for Guyana. At the airport, they took a cab and headed for their destination. When they arrived, the owner was shocked at what he saw.
A number of persons had taken up residence in his unattended home. To rub salt in his wounds, when the owner tried to get through what was left of his gate, he was greeted by one of the unauthorised squatters who asked him where he was going.
His home had been taken over by strangers. There were no less than five families living there. The place was almost destroyed.
This scene is not unusual, especially for persons who leave their buildings unoccupied. They refuse to rent their homes because they know that there is a high risk that they would have problems evicting the tenant when the time came.
This often involves a protracted legal process that sides with tenants. They also know that tenants are not usually under any obligation to take care of the premises and more often than not when they leave, the owner ends up having to foot a heavy bill for repairs to the home. So they prefer to leave their homes unoccupied.
The problem is that there are now persons, especially in the towns, looking for such homes. They notice an unoccupied home and they invade and take it over. In due course, other unauthorised persons also take up residence.
This seems to have been the case with a building which was destroyed last Saturday by fire. A formerly beautiful colonial-styled structure, the said building was invaded by squatters who took up residence.
When fire struck last Saturday, it was said that as much as fifty persons resided there. They are now homeless, with almost all of them losing whatever possessions they had in the building.
They have been receiving assistance from individuals, as they should, because despite the fact that most of them were there without authorisation, and in a condemned building, they have suffered losses. They should be assisted.
But should this assistance be extended to providing a fast-tracking of government house lots? In Guyana, if you want a house lot, all you need to do is to go and squat and when the authorities come to destroy your structure, you are bound to qualify for a house lot.
While there should be sympathy for those who suffered as a result of the fire last Saturday, these persons should not qualify for fast-tracking of house lots.
These persons had to have been living somewhere before they took up residence at the now burnt-out location.
They were by no means homeless individuals who invaded a condemned building. No, they had to have come from somewhere, but took up residence because the laws do not allow for squatting to be a criminal offence.
Why should these individuals be fast-tracked for house lots when there may be more needy persons who have applied before and are awaiting the processing of their applications?
What process also will the government use to determine who lived on the premises? There will be others who will try to claim that they lived there just to be able to obtain house lots.
During the time when Mrs. Janet Jagan was president she gave out a number of lots to persons in Tiger Bay and also assisted them financially. Today large sections of Tiger Bay remain a shanty town, with makeshift structures being thrown up on private property.
This is the problem that property owners face in Guyana. Someone can take up unauthorised residence on your property and there is nothing which you can do outside of instituting civil procedures. This is a real problem in Guyana.
If that building had not been destroyed by fire last Saturday, the owner may never have been able to gain possession of his property, because those living there in tenement conditions were not going to remove, despite the building being condemned. And the City Council which had an obligation to demolish the building always has an excuse for not acting.
It is always a human problem for the Council. But what about the owner, another human being who would have paid millions for the land and who has to watch while his building goes into disrepair and his land is occupied for years?
The government has to protect homeowners from these invasions by allowing for a less time-consuming process for eviction where someone is squatting on someone else’s property. Unless this is done, this form of trespassing will continue unabated.

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