Michelle Loubon

MP for Lopinot/Bon Air West Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas says farm­ers should be able to re­turn to their liveli­hoods at the San Jose Es­tate in Lopinot, once the se­cu­ri­ty is­sues have been re­solved.He made this com­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing dur­ing a protest led by pres­i­dent of the Lopinot Vil­lage Coun­cil Don­na Mo­ra and farm­ers from Lopinot and D'Aba­bie at his con­stituen­cy of­fice. The farm­ers com­plained ve­he­ment­ly that for three months they had not been able to plant the land nor reap their crops.On Feb­ru­ary 15, they were chased off the land by cut­lass-wield­ing thugs who pro­ceed­ed to planasse a group of farm­ers in­clud­ing the late farm­ers' ac­tivist Nor­ris De­onar­ine.Dou­glas al­so reg­is­tered his full sup­port for the pro­tes­tors by join­ing in with a plac­ard which read Lopinot Farm­ers Need Pro­tec­tion, Need To Be On The Land.

Dou­glas said: "The farm­ers have a le­git­i­mate con­cern. They need to get back to plant the land. That is crit­i­cal. I think we should fig­ure out a way to get the farm­ers back on their land."He ad­mit­ted there were chal­lenges like the farm­ers' pro­tec­tion. He pro­duced a let­ter he had writ­ten to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy.Dou­glas added: "Suf­fice it to say, it is not an easy process."We have been li­ais­ing with the Asst Supt. I have writ­ten to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ask­ing them for as­sis­tance to help the farm­ers on the land.

"Up to last night, I have writ­ten to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ask­ing them for sup­port to help the farm­ers get back on their land."Dou­glas said: "I have been sup­port­ing the farm­ers and try­ing to go through the le­gal process. I un­der­stand their con­cerns but if it helps to bring their cause for­ward that is what it takes. "We have to pre­pare a way to get the farm­ers back in­to their land...a stronger law en­force­ment process."Quizzed on whether the farm­ers would get com­pen­sa­tion, Dou­glas said it would be left to Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath.

Help com­ing soon

Dou­glas was ac­com­pa­nied by his com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist Jonathan Stone who said he was op­ti­mistic with­in "the next 48 hours we would be able to go up to the land." He said that they met with the po­lice and the As­sis­tant Supt of Po­lice.Stone said: "We would be able to go up there and in­form the gen­tle­men with po­lice present that they ought not to hit or min­gle or run the farm­ers off the land. That would be made clear. We would want them to give as­sis­tance to get the mat­ter re­solved."Stone said along with the po­lice, Dou­glas and his en­tourage would "in­form the men that they have to leave the farm­ers alone be­cause it is de­ter­mined at this junc­ture that they are not the farm­ers of the land. They have to leave the farm­ers alone."

Own­er­ship of the land

In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view (April 10) Bharath said they can­not make an in­ter­ven­tion un­til a "le­gal search is done."Yes­ter­day, Dou­glas said they have been able to de­ter­mine 712 acres of land were owned by the gov­ern­ment; an­oth­er owned by one per­son and an­oth­er owned by a swa­mi "but even those lands you can't de­ter­mine who owns it be­cause it is not a con­tigu­ous piece of land."He said the le­gal doc­u­ment en­tailed thou­sands of pages dat­ing back to 1904.

Food cards

An­oth­er is­sue that the farm­ers protest­ed over was the dis­tri­b­u­tion of food cards. Mo­ra claimed that on­ly "sev­en of the 52 farm­ers had re­ceived food cards."Com­ment­ing on the dis­tri­b­u­tion, Dou­glas said: "When we ne­gio­tat­ed with them, we felt there were 11 peo­ple who ne­go­ti­at­ed with them. We took those names and we got sev­en of them food cards. The oth­er four are com­pli­cat­ed. We have been try­ing to cre­ate a stop gap mea­sure."

Farm­ers' protest

Chant­i­ng "Dou­glas must go," T&T Co­coa and Cof­fee In­dus­try board mem­ber Ter­rance Hay­wood and pres­i­dent of the Lopinot/La Pas­to­ra Farm­ers' Group Cyril Coop­er joined the protest.Hay­wood said they would con­tin­ue to keep up the strug­gle by "fight­ing for land tenure for farm­ers in Lopinot and all around.He called up­on gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish an Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search De­part­ment in mem­o­ry of De­onar­ine.Coop­er said one of the so-called own­ers "cuff down a man by the riv­er and even set up a garage on its banks."Mo­ra called up­on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­call Dou­glas.She said: "Three months now the farm­ers have not been able to go in­to their land. They are hun­gry. They need to go in­to their lands to feed their fam­i­lies."Dou­glas knew about the sit­u­a­tion be­fore the plan­nass­ing and he did not do any­thing to help us. He has not helped us, and he needs to go."