By
Peter Balroop
Sunday 23rd March, 2008
Government will be unable to meet the June 2008 deadline for delivery
of residential lots to former sugar workers, says land surveyor
Ganeshdath Ramcharitar.
And he’s seeking an urgent meeting with UNC Alliance chief
whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj to inform him of this.
Ramcharitar said he wants to tell the head of the T&T Civil
Rights Association that while most of the lots had been surveyed,
the Estate Management Business Development Corporation (EMBDC) was
way behind with installation of sewer and electricity facilities.
These had to be in place for the local health authorities to give
permission for the residential leases to be handed over, Ramcharitar
said last week.
In his expert view, if underground sewer and electricity facilities
were installed after the thousands of residential lots had been
surveyed at 5,000 feet each, the boundaries surveyors had fixed
could be mixed up.
Maharaj had, in December last year, won a case on behalf of the
ex-Caroni workers against the State, getting Justice Lennox Deyalsingh
to rule that the Government must give the former workers their residential
lot leases by June this year.
Ramcharitar recalled that in the wake of the Deyalsingh judgement
concerning the Caroni residential leases, Jerry Hospedales, chairman
of the Government’s Divestment Secretariat had called all the
surveyors involved to a meeting in December 2007 at the Eric Williams
Financial Complex to find out how the lotification exercise was
proceeding.
Ramcharitar said Hospedales was shocked, based on the information
he received from the five surveyors, including Ramcharitar, that
the operation was lagging behind.
It was in that context, he disclosed last week, that he was seeking
an audience with Maharaj.
Ramcharitar shot into the media spotlight on March 14, when a letter
from him to former minister in the Ministry of Finance Conrad Enill
was delivered to Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira in Parliament.
The letter claimed that an EMBDC executive had asked him for a Can
$10,000 gift last year.
Ramcharitar, 57, told the Sunday Guardian that he sought an appointment
with Nunez-Tesheira last week Wednesday on the matter.
Nunez-Tesheira could not be reached for comment yesterday and Information
Minister Neil Parsanlal, who said he would contact her and see if
she would arrange a meetings with Ramcharitar, had not called back
up to late yesterday.
‘I
always assisted in solving problems’
A surveyor with 27 years experience, the last 15 in private practice,
Ramcharitar said he first worked for the EMBDC in 2004 and the company
and its executives had always expressed satisfaction with his work,
possibly because he was always accessible to assist in solving problems.
Ramcharitar said lotification work was completed on seven sites
at Balmain, Beaucaro, Orange Field, Factory Road, Sonny Ladoo Road,
Waterloo and Esperanza.
In all, Ramcharitar handed over 1,125 lots at 5,000 square feet
each, which he was contracted by the EMBDC to survey at $690 (Vat
inclusive) each.
Recently, Ramcharitar said he has been experiencing no end of problems
to collect further payments for invoices submitted.
Ramcharitar indicated he had been contracted to survey a total of
22 sites of varying perimeters, but only 15 had been handed over
to him.
Instead, another firm was given the job at the other sites, he claimed.
Last week, Ramcharitar said he was no millionaire by any stretch
of the imagination.
Ramcharitar said in the interest of completing the survey and lotification
work speedily, he sub-contracted work to a team of seven surveyors,
paying them $500 for each lot they marked off, so he earned just
$190 for himself, per lot.
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