There has been a long history of the regularizing of squatting

Dear Editor,

My regard for Mr. Nigel Hinds went up several notches. I will be candid and admit that it was at a rather low ebb before. But his resignation was a pleasant surprise and of a man willing to stand by his beliefs over what is wrong.

What happened at Success with the squatters is wrong. I am against squatting. It is illegal, it is frowned upon, it is neither condoned nor welcomed. But, at the same time, I also see poor Guyanese continuing a trend that started way back in the 1990s, with one of the first of such acts being the illegal settling (squatting) upon the property of a former PNC minister. It took a lot of dogged determination to arrive at the required remedy of removal. Sometime around the same time, if not before, Sophia started to stir into sparse residential life. Sure, it was of shacks and the rest now well known, but it was of squatters, who today have proliferated to a sprawling community of approximately 30,000 citizens. They have been ‘legitimized’ like the ones previously squatting on the northern Lamaha Street (Railway Embankment) periphery. They, too after much resistance have since been relocated to Parfait Harmonie, where they are managing in a more civilized environment. I am sure that there were others handled well, but of whom I do not know.

Yet, Success took a turn for the worse. It was as though both sides wanted to push the other to see who would blink first. With neither side giving, positions hardening, and the rhetoric flaring, the appalling and disgusting came into being. The land around the rickety homesteads of the squatters at Success were deliberately flooded to flush them out. I still find it unbelievable that the government settled upon such a heavy- handed approach. Whatever its mental and internal rationalizations, there can be no justification for such a course of action. We are good at lecturing, if not hectoring, other societies about the occasional deplorable manner in which they treat migrants, yet here we are unable and unwilling to deal with our own citizens in a tempered and compassionate way.

I saw the recent picture in the media of the Head of State finally consenting to meet with the squatters, which I laud. I am at a loss as to why a flashpoint was not recognized and that that same action of reaching out was not attempted first, was not tried before matters deteriorated to the fevered pitch that took ferocious hold. When we should be acting, our leaders are best at reacting, but only when matters have gone to the brink.

To his credit, Mr. Nigel Hinds stepped up and stood out; I am glad that he had the decency and integrity to do so unequivocally. I regret and I am ashamed that his fellow political newcomers treasure their government paying gigs so much that they are paralyzed by fear and indecision from taking a stand, from acting out of conscience and conviction.

Yours faithfully, GHK Lall