Gail Alexan­der

De­spite ac­cept­ing the Gov­ern­ment's com­pen­sa­tion of­fer, dis­lo­cat­ed Ch­agua­nas and D'Abadie farm­ers have re­ject­ed re­lo­ca­tion and are call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar to in­ter­vene on their be­half on her ar­rival home on Sun­day. Farm­ers ap­pealed for Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion yes­ter­day af­ter a two-and-a-half-hour meet­ing with Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath at Bharath's min­istry in St Clair. The meet­ing was the first face-to-face en­counter of farm­ers with Mooni­lal, af­ter de­struc­tion of their crops on Mon­day by Mooni­lal's HDC agency.

Mooni­lal said a mid­dle-class hous­ing project was be­ing built on the land. He dis­tanced him­self from the bull­doz­ing fi­as­co. He said when he left T&T on va­ca­tion last week, he was un­aware the HDC was go­ing to clear the land on Mon­day. Mooni­lal said HDC CEO Jear­lean John had act­ed pur­suant to HDC's man­date, and..."al­though she has tak­en a beat­ing on this, that's par for the course." The min­is­ter who said yes­ter­day's meet­ing was "very in­tense at times," con­firmed both sides were up­set. Farm­ers armed with at­tor­neys, left the meet­ing grim, say­ing they had asked the Gov­ern­ment for four con­ces­sions and were leav­ing on­ly with the of­fer of com­pen­sa­tion for trau­ma and dam­aged crops.

They have ac­cept­ed mar­ket val­ue pay­ment for dam­aged crops which would be paid by the Hous­ing Min­istry. Gov­ern­ment al­so agreed to re­move po­lice from the land. T&T Sheep and Goat Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Shi­raz Khan, said Mooni­lal did not de­liv­er the apol­o­gy farm­ers want­ed. "That is dis­re­spect to the peo­ple, who cam­paigned...They are do­ing things the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion did to farm­ers," he said. "They al­so re­fused to al­low us to con­tin­ue farm­ing the land and have of­fered a 30-year tenure on oth­er lands which we re­ject­ed. "Why re­lo­cate farm­ers who spent 30 years de­vel­op­ing these lands? Why not re­lo­cate hous­ing projects?"

Leap­ing at Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion, Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Dhanoo Sookoo said: "Of course, that's a must! An im­me­di­ate meet­ing-we want her to make the de­ci­sion in this."

Khan added: "The Prime Min­is­ter was the one say­ing on the elec­tion plat­form that agri­cul­tur­al lands would stay in agri­cul­ture...We want her to take charge of this right now! Just like she did with every­thing when she come back to the coun­try." Sookoo added: "We wish to let Mr Mooni­lal and the en­tire Gov­ern­ment know that we re­gret the ac­tion we'll be tak­ing to­mor­row (to­day) and the days ahead-we're here to se­cure food for the peo­ple of T&T and we'll stand and fight for those arable lands to re­main in agri­cul­ture." Farm­ers will be demon­strat­ing to­day, start­ing at Wood­ford Square, Port-of- Spain at 1.30 pm. The Low­er House is on a break un­til around May 13, the Gov­ern­ment con­firmed. Khan said: "We'll con­tin­ue do­ing what we have to-we want to send a loud mes­sage to this ad­min­is­tra­tion that we're not go­ing to take what the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion did to us."

They said crop val­ue and com­pen­sa­tion would be as­sessed at next week's meet­ing. Mooni­lal said: "We've al­ways said we re­gret what hap­pened. I wish it didn't. Not want­i­ng to be pre­sump­tious or too full of my­self, I'd say that had I been in T&T, it would not have hap­pened that way-I don't know. "But the out­come may well have been the same, as those lands were ear­marked for sev­er­al years and farm­ers re­ceived evic­tion no­tices," he added. He said 15 Egypt Vil­lage farm­ers and three of four at Mau­si­ca who farm 73 acres were no­ti­fied. On who man­dat­ed the bull­doz­ing, Mooni­lal said once served with no­tices, ac­tion was im­mi­nent and once served, bull­doz­ing was a "log­i­cal fi­nal step." He added: "There was no set date. Nei­ther my­self nor Bharath got a call and pressed any but­ton. These agen­cies do their work.

"Cur­rent­ly LSA is con­tem­plat­ing the de­struc­tion of squat­ters and when they will do that is up to their lead­er­ship." He said HDC had the au­thor­i­ty un­der the law to act in the farm­ers' is­sue. "Ms John act­ed pur­suant to the man­date...she's been fol­low­ing these is­sues," he said. "But there are some as­pects of the out­come which you re­gret and had I been in the area, maybe we could have in­ter­vened ear­li­er." Mooni­lal said both sides agreed on a joint team to de­cide what land would be used for hous­ing and agri­cul­ture. He said he hoped Mon­day's in­ci­dent would nev­er re­cur. Bharath said he did not think the sit­u­a­tion would cause a hike in food prices.