By Vernon Daley, Staff ReporterSQUATTERS AT Mona Commons, St. Andrew are unlikely to be moved to a single location, as was originally intended by the Government.
Minister of Water and Housing, Donald Buchanan, made the disclosure on Tuesday in the House during answers to questions posed by MP for Eastern St. Andrew, Dr. St. Aubyn Bartlett.
Mr. Buchanan suggested that the Government had abandoned the plans to put the residents at a single location because of difficulties in securing suitable lands.
"At earlier stages, this was the intention but the difficulties in finding a single location now make that unlikely," he said.
Mona Commons, a squatter community, is located in front of the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), Mona, St. Andrew. Figures from a 1999 survey showed the community with 223 households comprising 903 persons.
Four years ago, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson insisted that the squatters had to be removed because their presence was threatening the ability of the UHWI to maintain accreditation.
In fact, Mona Commons is among four communities, targeted under government's Relo-cation 2000 programme, which was announced in 1999. The programme was designed to provide improved housing conditions for squatters. The other communities under the programme are Railway Gardens and Barracks Road in St. James; and Seville in St. Ann.
Despite the problems in finding suitable lands, the Minister said the Government was still committed to relocating the residents. He added that the Relocation 2000 team along with the National Housing Trust (NHT) were "still in the process of identifying suitable lands."
He added: "If there are residents in Mona Commons, who at present are NHT contributors, the Trust will be prepared to make special benefits for assisting their voluntary relocation to other areas."
More than two years ago the relocation of the residents blew up into a major public controversy when the government attempted to move the residents onto University of the West Indies (UWI) lands, adjacent to the Sir John Golding Rehabilitation Centre, which caters to physically challenged persons.
The move triggered condemnation from lecturers and students from the UWI as well as residents of the nearby Elletson Flats community. Subsequently, the Court of Appeal upheld a Supreme Court order barring the UWI from permitting the Government to use any portion of its land to house the squatters until a lawsuit pending in the Supreme Court had been disposed of.
The Sir John Golding Rehabilitation Centre (Mona Rehabilitation Foundation) filed the lawsuit in the Supreme Court contending that the land being allotted for the relocation was leased to the Foundation for 99 years.
