By Sue-Ann Wayow
OPPOSITION Member of Parliament said attorney Dinesh Rambally will be heading a team of lawyers to assist residents of East Port of Spain who are being relocated by government.
On Sunday, Opposition Senator Wade Mark, said the attorneys met with residents following their recent clash with the Housing Development Corporation (HDC).
The Opposition would be following up with a meeting on Monday, Mark added, while speaking at a press briefing.
The HDC is seeking to relocate the residents from its apartment complex on Duncan Street and lower Independence Square.
However, the residents claim that they were being sent to far off areas such as Princes Town which was unfair since many of them worked in and around Port of Spain and their children attended schools in the city.
“What a shameless episode Trinidad and Tobago witnessed. Well, the UNC has intervened and we have sent a team of lawyers to East Port of Spain. We will not sit idly by and allow the People’s National Movement to simply ride roughshod over the citizens,” Mark said.
Pointing out that many of those residents would have probably voted for the present administration, the Opposition would “defend their rights and freedoms.”
Mark said, “They have literally forced the people to go to Penal, to Couva, to Princes Town, to Chaguanas… this criminal administration have no sensitivity. They are so insensitive to the needs of their own constituents that they bring in police to run these people and they went and they broke down their windows. They forced them to remove all their belongings.”
He said the residents were being treated inhumanely being monitored by police to ensure their evacuation.
“We are not saying that people cannot move or should not move for redevelopment but don’t send them in Princes Town,” Mark added.
Mark also claimed that Government wants to create an affluent “Eastmoorings” to complement Westmoorings where
“They want that part of Port-of-Spain for their friends and their family, so they want the bourgeoisie to become the new tenants of Port-of-Spain,” he claimed.
Mark warned, “The PNM wants to create an Eastmoorings, I am warning the people of East Port of Spain.”
