Welch Village squatters to finally receive land deeds

he long-awaited conveyance deeds permitting squatters residing in Welch Village, St John to own land are now ready for distribution, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced on Thursday.

The deeds are to be handed over to residents at an upcoming ceremony, finally fulfilling promises made to villagers in 2018 that they would be able to purchase the land they occupy under the Tenantries Freehold Purchase Act. Some 22 residents had received purchase letters a few months later, but had been left in limbo since then regarding their next steps.

“The conveyances are now available,” Mottley said on Thursday evening during a session of St John Speaks. “The prices that the people will pay for the conveyance range between $300 and $696. That is what this government is doing to ensure that we enfranchise the people of Welch to make sure you can go to the bank with the conveyance . . . that means you can get a mortgage for the payment of less than a pair of sneakers.”

The prime minister added: “It is important to us that we give you the deepest relationship you will have with a country or democracy – the ownership of property and that we do so respecting other principles that we put in place with the Tenantries Freehold Purchase Act.”

Conveyances for those residing in the nearby Bathland area “are to come”, Mottley said.

But villagers expressed scepticism that they would become landowners soon. Myrico Morris, president of the Welch and Bathland Committee Group, told Barbados TODAY: “I really do hope what [the PM] said comes to fruition quickly . . . within the next month or two, or before the end of the year even, so people can start to do what they need to do.

“I know the World Cup is getting attention now and then right after it is Crop Over so it’s going to be a stretch. So even though she’s given the assurance that some of them are ready, we still don’t know when we’d be able to go to the bank to get a mortgage.”

Morris recounted that several people, including himself, had received offer letters and paid fees in 2019 but only had receipts, not legal documents proving ownership.

“It’s now to get the legal document to say that the land is ours. That’s what we are waiting on,” he said.

The community advocate said that after the “fanfare” of the 2019 presentation of offer letters, during which “it was being said everywhere that people of Welch Village have received an early Christmas present”, residents were disappointed to still be awaiting deeds five years later. “Once bitten twice shy,”
he said.

(SM)