“Long road ahead for Sir Lynden Pindling Estates residents” – The Nassau Guardian 5^th August 2014

Excerpt from this article; “Janet Munroe, a mother of five, has been living in Sir Lynden Pindling Estates for nearly 10 years.

Munroe, like hundreds of other residents in the area, is living on land that the Privy Council has ruled is owned by Arawak Homes.

The court last Tuesday upheld a Court of Appeal judgment, which affirmed Arawak Homes’ ownership of the property.

Last Wednesday, Arawak Homes President Franon Wilson said the company is giving the residents in the area 12 months to sort out their property titles.”

If I remember correctly these persons were native Bahamian citizens who seemed to have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous real estate agents who led them to legally build, to code on, land which the real estate agents had no rights to; did not own, so eventually the homeowners ended up losing their entire investments.  This was after a court battle to save their homes and after having lived in their homes for up to 10 years.

With this fresh in our mind, we will now come to the present; “INJUNCTED – Judge orders govt. to halt all shanty town clearances” – The Tribune

Excerpt from this article; “THE SUPREME Court has ordered the government and utility providers to halt and planned service disconnections or evictions in shanty towns pending a judicial review of the Minnis administration’s policy to eradicate those communities.

Supreme Court Justice Cheryl Grant-Thompson granted the interlocutory[1] injunction blocking evictions and service disconnections just days ahead of the government’s August 10 deadline during a telephone conference with attorney Fred Smith, QC and Attorney General Carl Bethel on Saturday.

Leave for judicial review – file on behalf of 177 shanty town residents from both New Providence and Abaco, and non-profit group Respect Our Homes Ltd (ROHL) – was granted on Friday.

Shanty town residents are seeking to ventilate concerns the government’s eradication policy’ and subsequent evictions are unlawful, unconstitutional and motivated by ethnic discrimination without clear title to land ownership.”

So do Bahamian citizens have to form a non-profit group called Respect Our Country Ltd (ROCL) to bring about law and order in these matters and what exactly does “……ethnic discrimination to without clear title to land ownership” actually mean and how are these eviction being seen as unlawful and unconstitutional?

Does this mean that the government has failed to prove that these persons have illegally built on land that is not theirs?  Or that the persons who have built there are being ‘rewarded’ by not adhering to the laws of The Bahamas has it pertains to land ownership? 

Let me say that it is my opinion that if you are an illegal migrant you then no right to any land in The Bahamas, whether ownership is in question or not and also if you are a squatter, whose ownership is in question as is suggested here, just how long can you be allowed to go on because as in the case of Ms. Janet Munroe vs. Arawak Homes, ten years and an established life does not even give one ‘rights’.

So if you assume that these persons, be they Bahamians, legal migrants or illegal migrants, have built on private land as is being suggested by Fred Smith, then these persons must have gotten permission from the land owners to built illegal structures and if they have built on Crown Land without the permission of The Crown, doesn’t The Crown then have the right to bulldoze these homes if it sees fit?

END

[1] adjective

1.

LAW

(of a decree or judgment) given provisionally during the course of a legal action.

“an interlocutory injunction”

2.

rare

relating to dialogue.