Demolition crew leaves Victoria family under the stars

Jan 04, 2013 News

The Christie family had not yet completed celebrating the festive season when a demolition crew, acting with a court order, abruptly disrupted their livelihood yesterday afternoon by destroying the two-storey house they had occupied for the past 33 years.
The family, consisting of 20 persons, is now sleeping under the stars in the said yard, having vowed not to be “bullied” out of the property, despite the order of the court.

Christie and his family could only watch helplessly as the demolition crew dismantled their house.

The dispute is between Albert Christie and Desmond Saul over a plot of land at Victoria on the East Coast of Demerara.
Christie is claiming that he has a transport for the plot of land on which his house, a two-storey wooden and concrete structure, with three bedrooms in the upper flat and two below, has been located for the past three decades, while Saul told this newspaper that he legally acquired the land in the 1980s.
The matter has been engaging the High Court, with Christie claiming that his Transport was found to be legal by way of prescriptive rights, and Saul challenging its authenticity.
Saul, who was domiciled in Canada for a while, told this newspaper that after acquiring the land, he had offered Christie and other “squatters” lease arrangements, since they had already had buildings there.
He said that all the other persons, except Christie accepted the proposal.
“He (Christie) said that he doesn’t want a lease because he’s gonna get the land by prescriptive rights. I told him he couldn’t. I left the offer for the lease open to him for one year,” Saul explained.
He stated that when the year was up he wrote to Christie, withdrawing the lease offer, while initiating legal action to get him off the land.
But while that action was pending, according to Saul, Christie began building another house on the land which forced him to file an injunction to halt the construction.
“In the middle of the action going on, Christie turned up with a Transport. How he got it, I don’t know. But at the end of the action the judge ordered that the Transport be cancelled, which the registrar did. That was in 2004,” Saul related.
He told Kaieteur News that since then, Christie has defied the court order to remove his house from the land, hence the move to have it dismantled yesterday.
But Saul’s move appeared to be unpopular with villagers, who had gathered at the scene where Neighbourhood Police ranks were observing the demolition to ensure that there was no breach of the peace.
Christie, buoyed by the support he was receiving, charged that it was Saul who had obtained the land by fraud. He insisted that he had a legal Transport and alleged that there was some skullduggery at the Land Court Registry that resulted in Saul getting judgment against him for the land.
As the demolition crew proceeded with their work, Christie’s wife lamented what she called the lack of justice for a certain class of people in Guyana.
“I get 11 children and 36 grands, almost all living in hey. I want to know if Guyana doesn’t have a law because we gat transport fuh dis place,” the woman cried.
She said that her husband has been paying the rates and taxes for the land, a process which was done even for the whole of last year.
Christie has since contacted his lawyer, but according to information received by this newspaper, his attorneys will first have to appeal the Chief Justice’s order before filing an injunction to prevent further removal of Christie’s property from the plot of land.