By Leonardo Blair, Staff ReporterWITH JUST three days left for the Port Authority of Jamaica's (PAJ) eviction notice to expire, fishermen and fish vendors who recently relocated to PAJ-owned lands along the Portmore Causeway in St. Catherine are insisting they won't be budging until somewhere suitable is found for them to continue their business.
Up to yesterday afternoon, however, chief executive officer of the National Road Operating and Construction Company (NROCC), Dr. Wayne Reid, who the fishermen and vendors say was instrumental in moving them onto PAJ lands, did not appear to have a solution to the problem.
"They (NROCC executives) are still meeting on the issue so Dr. Reid cannot comment at this time," said an NROCC representative after several attempts to reach Dr. Reid.
PEACEFUL SOLUTION
The fisherfolk remain adamant, however, that if a peaceful solution was not found quickly, the situation was likely to get nasty. "We are ready to move but them (NROCC) have to find somewhere to put we otherwise there is going to be some problems and we don't want that," said Joseph Trevors, a fisherman along the Causeway for several years.
On Tuesday, legal counsel for the PAJ declared that the seven-day notice issued on Monday to the fisherfolk would remain effective whether they liked it or not.
"The newspaper said it was bureaucratic bungling (that caused the fisherfolk to be relocated on to lands belonging to the PAJ) but we weren't in it," Carrol Pickers-gill, attorney-at-law for the PAJ, had said. "If NROCC placed them there then I guess they have somewhere to put them. They may have had good intentions but they can't do it at the expense of another development."
QUIT LANDS
On Monday the fisherfolk cried foul after they received notices from the Port Authority informing them to quit lands on the harbour side of the road heading to Port-more from downtown Kingston where a number of them had relocated just days before. The relocation is to facilitate the construction of the Portmore segment of Highway 2000.
They claim they were paid by NROCC officials to move and were assured that the PAJ would not be ready for the lands for at least another five years.
The PAJ has argued that it had spent some US$22 million ($1.3 billion) to prepare the land and if the fisherfolk were allowed to remain it would be in breach of the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code, which allows the Kingston Wharves to continue serving as a conduit of trade within the United States market.
