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TRESPASSING!

Sep 02, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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.
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.
But should assistance be extended to fast-tracking government house lots for persons trespassing? 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.
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?
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 unauthorized residence on your property and there is nothing you can do outside of instituting civil procedures. This is a real problem in Guyana.
The government has to protect homeowners from these invasions by trespassers, allowing for a less time-consuming process for eviction where someone is squatting on someone else’s property. At present if someone trespasses on your property, you have to file costly and length civil proceedings to have then removed.
This is why the laws need to be changed to make it easier for trespassers to be removed. Unless this is done, this form of trespassing will continue unabated.

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