Squatters at Bellevue, Station Hill, St Michael were evicted and ordered to remove every trace of their illegal structures when officials from the Town and Country Planning Department swooped down on the area today.
They were served notice to cease construction immediately and given 14 days to move the structures from the land, including building materials and rubble. The squatters were also instructed to restore the land to the condition in which they found it.
Notices posted on the structures by Town and Country Planning officials indicated that the residents had been building without permission.
“It appears to the Director of Planning and Development that the development has been carried out within the last four years and, based on a search of the records of the Planning and Development Department, that it has been carried out without the grant of planning permission required in that behalf in accordance with either Section 26 or 31 of the [Planning and Development] Act, 2019-5,” the notices stated.
“The Director of Planning and Development hereby requires that the following steps be taken to restore the land to its condition before the condition took place: Remove the dwelling house, remove from the land all material and rubble arising from compliance with the enforcement notice, restore the land to its condition before the breach took place, by levelling the ground.”
The notices applied to land at Station Hill and the adjoining lands of Manchant Investment Limited to the northeast, a gully to the south and other state lands to the north and west.
Arthur Holder, Member of Parliament for St Michael Central, the constituency within which the Bellevue squatters fall, told Barbados TODAY that as far as he was aware, the squatters who called the area home prior to 2020 were not among those served enforcement notices.
He explained that in 2020, following an order issued by Prime Minister Mia Mottley, he conducted a comprehensive survey of the Bellevue area to evaluate what the residents needed to improve their living conditions.
“I responded to the area today and based on what I saw, those houses that notices were placed on were not there in 2020 when the survey was conducted. Those are new houses that are being built in the area and those are the houses that the authorities have placed the notices on,” said Holder, a lawyer by profession.
“They are not part of my survey. If you go there, you would see that the notices have a demarcation which shows that that is outside of what was surveyed.”
Holder said during his survey, residents indicated that their inability to access water and natural gas were among their chief concerns.
“And the infrastructures are being done, as I speak, not only for the Bellevue area but also for the Belle, also for parts of St George and parts of The City, as part of a comprehensive programme,” the MP told Barbados TODAY.
Following Government’s announcement in August 2020 that squatters at Rock Hall, St Philip would be relocated, residents at Bellevue said they were keen to hear what the Mottley administration had in store for them, with many of them indicating they were willing to buy the land in the area which is designated a critical water zone.
They had accused the authorities of treating squatters as subhuman and said that in addition to not having running water despite living in the area for many years, they had to deal with a rodent infestation problem.
Last year Government had indicated that relief from water and sanitation problems was coming for squatters in Bellevue and other St Michael districts.
Minister in the Ministry of Water Resources Charles Griffith said then there would be construction of a water treatment plant to serve people in the Zone 1 areas of The Belle, Bellevue and Bailey’s Alley. He added that the project would entail the installation of individual communal septic tanks with filter technology as recommended by the Environmental Protection Department.
Over the years building in Zone I areas had been heavily restricted, but last year Government indicated it would re-zone some of these areas where squatters are located.
