COI recommends compensation for family whose home was destroyed by M&CC workers

Dec 05, 2018 News

The report prepared following the conclusion of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into City Hall’s operations, has recommended compensation for the Festival City family whose home was demolished by Mayor and City Council of Georgetown (M&CC) workers.
During the public hearings, Abiola Saul testified that officers of the M&CC had offered her $12M to leave a piece of commercial land that her family had occupied for close to three decades.
Saul appeared before the COI, where she told officials that she and her husband, had their Festival City house and shop demolished twice by the Council.
Saul said her husband inherited the land from his late father, and they were told by the M&CC that two other persons had documents for the land. She valued her loss to be in the millions as they were unable to retrieve anything after the property was demolished.
Saul said she was in constant contact with the Mayor, who told her that it was okay to rebuild, but that building was short-lived. She said that they can only vend dog food at the location at the moment.
Chairman of the COI, Justice Cecil Kennard, in his recommendations noted that “this sort of behaviour by officers of the City is nothing short of disgusting”.
“It seems to be a habit of the functionaries at the Council. I would recommend that this family be compensated,” the retired judge noted.
Saul had told the Commission that on November 16, 2016, officers from the City Engineer’s Department came to her residence to offer her a deal.
“They told my husband that they were giving us $12M to leave the property alone and that we should accept the money because we are poor people and we can’t get the land. But I told them that we are not accepting any money, because we had already applied to Lands and Surveys to acquire a lease for the property.”
Saul explained that the land was passed down to her husband.
“My father-in-law had been given that land since the 1980s to cultivate, so it is part of my husband’s family. We had a house and shop there and I told them that we were not giving up the land, so they went away.”
Saul said, however, that a few months later, she had yet another encounter with the city workers. This time, the workers returned to the property and completely bulldozed her home and shop.
“They went there while me and my husband were on the road. We got a call from our neighbours that City Council was tearing down our house. When we arrived, the entire place was gone. They had already bulldozed everything.”
The woman said she had erected a flat concrete structure on the premises following consultations with then Mayor Patricia Chase-Green, but the city workers were determined to destroy her investment. The woman estimated her loss to be in excess of $16M.
Saul said that she again visited Mayor Patricia Chase-Green.
“The Mayor told me that she had no knowledge of the incident.”
She noted however that the Mayor never denied that the property was occupied by Morton Saul and his family for the past thirty years.

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