Are we being marginalized?

Aug 15, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Kindly allow me to respond to a letter in your daily of Wednesday August 10; 2011 (pg 3 captioned “We shouldn’t wait for a national disaster to modernize and secure Ogle and CJIA”), and in so doing reflect on the events that led to the establishing of homesteads thereabout.
All over the Caribbean and further afield, houses can be seen in close proximity to the airports, Guyana is no exception, the only difference is that of the caliber of houses. I would agree that some of the houses in the subject area are of low quality and that there is a need to standardize requirements for the lifting of aesthetics etc.
However, please let me be the first to state with pellucidity, that I am domiciled in the area, and have been so for the past 17 years. I have a family and have constructed a house, my home is made of concrete; the yard has coconut, pear and other fruit plants that have been bearing for the longest while.
I have devoted much of my adult life and earnings to the enhancement of social and infrastructural development for my family, and I am but the least of the many families that dwell in this vicinity.
Here is what happened: In 1997, my parents along with scores of other persons, in an attempt to acquire house lots to construct desperately needed homes, encroached on the abandon lands along the Timehri Base Road.
It must be noted that much was done to clear the heavily forested areas. To our dismay and nightmare, early one morning the officers of Lands and Survey Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, under the stewardship of then Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Reepu Daman Persaud, along with members of the Guyana Police Force-Tactical Service Unit (TSU), without warning destroyed those structures and incarcerated some of the leaders among us there.
Consequently, we sought refuge in the heavy bushes amidst the tons of garbage and rubble that were camouflaged under the heavy forest of trees and bushes that is now Timehri (North).It is apposite to note that there were persons resident there- about since in the 1980s, but living on the ‘down-low’ and planting farms.
Much was done within a short time, no police, nor officials of any ministry, not even the Timehri International Airport personnel interfered. As a matter of fact the then airport administration stopped dumping garbage in the area and started using the abandoned sandpit that is used presently.
I now assume that it spared those policy makers and administrators hundreds of millions of taxpaying dollars to have had the area developed to what it is today.
Almost immediately after we were forcibly and unceremoniously ejected from the Timehri Base Road, a colony of residents and farmers emanating from a community in the Demerara River called New St. Eustacius, nestled
themselves on those lands as if “highly organized”. Interestingly, not one of those squatters was removed or harassed by any authority. Squatting was then seen as a problem in the Timehri community. Assumable, in an effort to curb the situation, a series of public meetings were held at the Timehri Primary School, beginning with the then Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Reepu Daman Persaud, MP. We all felt good because the housing problem was being addressed. Ms. Philomena Sahoye-Shury, MP, then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Water and Director of Community Development Councils (CDC) presided over the discussions following and over a few years leading up to 2004. Delegations were formed as authorized by the Director of CDC and met on numerous occasions at her office in the Ministry of Housing. After several public meetings with residents of the areas squatted on at Timehri North and South or Kali Road/GAC Old Road as it is popularly known and the Base Road, the Permanent Secretary, concluded that the government was going to regularize those areas. A sum of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) was said to be a requirement as condition for the payment for the house lot, and that a payment plan would be put in place. Consequently, officers of that Ministry came around demarcating house lots and numbering the lots starting with the letters “TN” (as in Timehri North), additionally, a list of the occupants to the house lots assigned was created by those officers. So we were all happy and started to fortify our investments.
The residents in Kali Road and Base Road first received lease and titles, while we in the North waited. We are forced to think that we are being targeted because of our ethnicity. The overwhelming majority of us are of a certain race while in those areas mentioned before the overwhelming majority is of a different ethnicity. We have done the best some of us can. What is happening to the Lease/Title for our homesteads? Can someone please come and represent us, we are in the thousands and they want to bulldoze us, because of how we were born. Who do these people think we are? When the lights on the runway were stolen, they accused us publicly, we were innocent! When the culprits were caught, and when it was discovered who those culprits were, nothing was said.
Now with this aircraft situation, again we are placed under the microscope and we are being pushed in a corner and are to be victimized. Why is it so important to have us removed when a branch of the state prison is instituted on the perimeter of the of the Airport Fence north of the Airport: this institution comprises of a large compound which houses the prison population, upper-flat houses for senior prison officers, a two story building for male officers. Two additional houses were recently constructed off of the perimeter fence north of the Airport for the Guyana Fire Service.  It must be noted that the major runway lies north east to south west while the secondary runway lies north west to south east, the homesteads in Timehri North are completely out of the range of arriving or departing aircrafts.
And finally, the incidents referred to by Mr. Ray Chickrie in paragraph five of the referenced letter  with the vultures hitting the aircraft or vice versa is in effect erroneous and a fallacy. When aircrafts take off, they immediately leave the environs of the North Timehri but pass over a number of communities that rear poultry and other farm animals to which those speculations should be addressed. Sometime in 2009, the residents were advised not to rear poultry and complied, in some instances giving away our domestic fowls and in others selling them relatively cheap.
We have done what is required under the circumstances, and now are awaiting the intervention of the Ministry of Housing for our titles. We are now suspicious as to what or who is intended to be placed here. We were once forced to move to accommodate a demographic arrangement. We have placed our lives and livelihood in the hands of Ms. Philomena Sahoye-Shury, she spoke and we believed.  She spoke on behalf of the Government of Guyana, for some of the resultant actions amplify the policies of the Government. Are we being marginalized?
Sherlanda M. Daniels

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