La Romaine tenants turn to lawyers over new leases

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Oropouche West MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has mo­bilised a team of lawyers to as­sist res­i­dents of La Ro­maine who say they are be­ing pres­sured to sign new leas­es for prop­er­ties their fam­i­lies have oc­cu­pied for more than six decades.

Lawyers from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, along with coun­cil­lor Shel­don Lal, met with res­i­dents of La Plai­sance Es­tate on Sat­ur­day and pro­vid­ed le­gal ad­vice on their con­cerns.

Dr Bo­doe said that, as the con­stituen­cy's MP, he would do what he could to as­sist res­i­dents fac­ing what he de­scribed as a dif­fi­cult le­gal is­sue.

Stan­ley Ken­rick Her­ry, chair­man of the La Ro­maine Land Ten­ants As­so­ci­a­tion, told Guardian Me­dia that the res­i­dents, many of them el­der­ly, have been liv­ing on the es­tate for more than 60 years. How­ev­er, they said that over the past four years they have faced grow­ing un­cer­tain­ty over their ten­an­cies.

They claim they are be­ing asked to sign two-year agree­ments for land they have oc­cu­pied for gen­er­a­tions, while some said they have re­ceived let­ters warn­ing them about the con­se­quences of out­stand­ing rent.

Her­ry said that res­i­dents have faced in­creas­es in land rent, re­quests for per­son­al and fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion, the in­tro­duc­tion of two-year agree­ments and dif­fi­cul­ties pay­ing rent if they refuse to sign the new leas­es. He said some of the ten­ants were an­nu­al ten­ants and statu­to­ry ten­ant.

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion, some ten­ants have been asked to com­plete "know your client" forms and sign new agree­ments when at­tempt­ing to pay their rent.

Ken­rick Her­ry said res­i­dents had tra­di­tion­al­ly paid their rent an­nu­al­ly and main­tained that ten­ants who oc­cu­pied the land be­fore June 1, 1981, were pro­tect­ed un­der statu­to­ry arrange­ments.

He said the in­tro­duc­tion of two-year agree­ments had cre­at­ed un­cer­tain­ty for peo­ple who had spent most of their lives on the es­tate.

Res­i­dents, he said, want ad­e­quate time to re­view and un­der­stand any new agree­ment be­fore sign­ing.

He claimed some ten­ants who de­clined to sign the new doc­u­ments were sub­se­quent­ly un­able to have their rent ac­cept­ed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion has al­so raised con­cerns about an al­leged two per cent month­ly in­ter­est charge on out­stand­ing rent.

Her­ry es­ti­mat­ed that more than 2,000 ten­ants could be af­fect­ed across the es­tate, al­though he ac­knowl­edged that fig­ure had not been in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.

He said some res­i­dents had signed the new agree­ments while oth­ers had re­fused.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is now seek­ing le­gal ad­vice and con­sid­er­ing pos­si­ble court ac­tion. Res­i­dents are al­so ap­peal­ing to the Min­istry of Land and oth­er rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties for as­sis­tance.

One res­i­dent, who said she had not paid the in­creased rent since 2023 be­cause the com­pa­ny re­fused to ac­cept pay­ment un­less she signed the new con­tract, said she sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived a let­ter warn­ing her about the out­stand­ing amount.

Oth­er res­i­dents claimed cheques had not been ac­cept­ed and that they had been asked to make pay­ments in cash.

Maria Lee-Rud­der said res­i­dents were not try­ing to avoid pay­ing rent but want­ed trans­paren­cy, a fair process and se­cu­ri­ty of tenure af­ter decades on the es­tate.

She said they al­so want­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prop­er­ly re­view any pro­posed agree­ment be­fore sign­ing and clar­i­ty on how the rents were be­ing cal­cu­lat­ed.

For sev­er­al res­i­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly pen­sion­ers, the is­sue has added to their fi­nan­cial bur­den.

Sheila Gan­garam, a pen­sion­er who lives with her dis­abled son, said the sit­u­a­tion was cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial pres­sure.

Gan­garam said res­i­dents had pre­vi­ous­ly sought Bo­doe's as­sis­tance and were hop­ing he would in­ter­vene again.

Hami­da Ali said her fam­i­ly had lived on the es­tate for about 56 or 57 years.

She said the prop­er­ty was orig­i­nal­ly rent­ed by her fa­ther be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to her and her chil­dren. How­ev­er, she said some util­i­ty ac­counts re­mained in her late fa­ther's name, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to change the records.

Ali claimed she was be­ing asked to sign the new agree­ment and pay the in­creased rent be­fore some of those mat­ters could be re­solved.

"I want to pay the rent. I want to do what I'm sup­posed to do in the right way. But they're block­ing every­thing you do," Ali said.

Elvis Ramjohn, who said he be­gan rent­ing land on the es­tate in 1972, re­called when the com­mu­ni­ty had few ba­sic ameni­ties, in­clud­ing prop­er roads, wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty.

He said res­i­dents had con­tributed to de­vel­op­ing and im­prov­ing the area over the decades and now want­ed greater cer­tain­ty about their fu­ture.

"We are so con­fused and frus­trat­ed," Ramjohn said, ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment and rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to in­ter­vene.

The res­i­dents al­so ques­tioned why they were be­ing asked to en­ter in­to short-term agree­ments af­ter liv­ing on the es­tate for gen­er­a­tions.

In 2024, res­i­dents staged a protest out­side the of­fice of the re­al es­tate com­pa­ny re­port­ed­ly han­dling the new leas­es.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the com­pa­ny for com­ment on the res­i­dents' con­cerns, but calls went unan­swered as the of­fice was closed.