Sophia residents return to protest CH&PA's actions

Sophia residents return to protest CH&PA’s actions

Oct 24, 2017 News

Protesters outside CH&PA’s Head Office

The residents of Sophia returned to the Ministry of Communities, Central Housing & Planning Authority (CH&PA) Head Office on Brickdam to protest the continuance of the demolition of their structures. The residents had only sent a small representative group last Monday but returned yesterday in numbers to address their problem.
This recent action was due to the marking and demolishing of structures by the CH&PA in Sophia. The Anti-Squatting Task Force, on Thursday and Friday last had used paint to mark the houses of the squatters. A total of 700 houses where marked out of over 1200 structures.
Chief Executive Officer, Lelon Saul had reached an agreement with the squatters to allow a few of them to stay and monitor the land, but Public Relations Officer (PRO) Kellon Ferrier said that that might not be possible, since a lot of them will be in the way of the operations.
Ferrier explained that the Ministry removed the squatters because maintenance works needed to be done across the community.
“We are trying to eradicate this, because the dams need to be cleared, and in order for maintenance works be done on these drains this needs to occur. The exercise (marking of houses to be demolished) was done on Thursday last, where we served notices to persons for them to remove from the dams and we gave them two solutions, which was to allow them to come in and reinitiate their land applications in the system and those who have not applied for land, to come and see how we could better their situation”
Some of the residents threatened that if their pleas fell on deaf ears, they would most likely become disagreeable and react accordingly, since they have nowhere else to go. Others explained that they were prepared to accept any location to house their families.
Many complained that the ministry is only is making promises that are false and meaningless. Another major complaint of many of the residents is that they have applied and reapplied for house lots over the years and received no response, causing them to choose the last resort of squatting.
A representative of the Ministry and Community Organiser, Pastor Thomas explained that the affirmation given to the protesters is that they should full up house lot forms.
“The Ministry has advised that the disgruntled folks fill out (land) forms and submit it and they will take it from there.”
A meeting was held between the Ministry Officials and residents at 18:00hrs in Sophia yesterday.

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