THE Opposition has asked the Government to explain why it allowed developers to forcibly remove scores of people from a parcel of land in Innswood, St Catherine on Tuesday, instead of having the residents relocated as was the original plan.

Opposition member of parliament, Audley Shaw, on Wednesday took the agriculture ministry to task over the matter, demanding to know which developer the Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ) Holdings had sold the land to and why the SCJ had not relocated the residents — former sugar workers and their families — before selling the property.

Shaw raised the questions at a meeting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee Parliament at Gordon House.

“I’m not sure about the eviction… SCJ Holdings is now the repository of all Government lands in the sugar industry — both lands which are leased to the divested entities and lands which were retained for management. In Innswood, the property in question was not one of those properties that were divested. The intent was that that property would be developed and the proceeds from that development used to facilitate those people who are still living on the plantations,” Permanent Secretary Donovan Stanberry first said, but later admitted that the property had in fact been sold to a private developer.

According to Stanberry, the intention was for those people to be “channeled elsewhere”, but said he did not know the facts and could not comment on the reason the residents were removed in that manner.

The Jamaica Observer reported on Wednesday that as tractors moved to demolish the dwellings, pleas of the residents, some of whom had been living on the land for more than three decades, were ignored. The residents said that although they were aware of plans for the housing project, and had been told to relocate, some of them had nowhere to go.

Meanwhile, Stanberry said defects found in the structures of dwellings being built at Springfield, Clarendon, under the sugar barracks relocation programme, were being fixed. He said the project is about 96 per cent complete.

Shaw had raised the issue of reported collapsing of floors and roadways in the housing scheme, but Stanberry said he was not aware of any problems with the roads, and that in fact he had visited the site on Sunday and saw no such defect.

— Alphea Saunders