Yvonne Ba­boolal

?Farm­ers from Aranguez, Curepe and Cunu­pia whose fields are ear­marked for the pro­posed new rail lines, have be­gun mo­bil­is­ing to re­sist any plan to take away their hold­ings. "We are not go­ing to give up one inch of land," Nor­ris De­onar­ine of the Na­tion­al Food­crop Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NF­FA) vowed last week. From as ear­ly as Sep­tem­ber last year, af­fect­ed farm­ers and res­i­dents be­gan re­ceiv­ing let­ters from the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) in­form­ing of Gov­ern­ment's plan to gath­er in­for­ma­tion about land own­er­ship. One let­ter, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2009, from Sean Mc­Don­nell, project man­ag­er of the Trinidad Rapid Rail Project (TR­RP) to a Cunu­pia farmer stat­ed: "The Gov­ern­ment has re­tained the Trini­Train Con­sor­tium to un­der­take plan­ning and pre­lim­i­nary works for the TR­RP. "The TR­RP is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by Nid­co on be­half of the Works Min­istry. "As part of the plan­ning works, it is nec­es­sary to iden­ti­fy the cur­rent own­ers of land parcels along and ad­ja­cent to the pro­posed route and to ob­tain some land par­cel iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in­for­ma­tion from them. "ROW Ser­vices, a Trini­Train sub-con­trac­tor, is charged with gath­er­ing this in­for­ma­tion."

The Gov­ern­ment has, thus far, kept the cost of the rail project to it­self but the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers APETT has es­ti­mat­ed it at "tens of bil­lions of dol­lars." More con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mates are be­tween $9 bil­lion and $15 bil­lion. De­onar­ine said there had been a call from Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Arnold Pig­gott to farm­ers to in­crease pro­duc­tion. "And we have done so. A num­ber of young peo­ple have gone in­to agri­cul­ture be­cause of the ap­par­ent en­cour­age­ment from the Gov­ern­ment. "Now, you have an­oth­er min­istry com­ing to take agri­cul­tur­al land for projects. "If they in­tend to pass through farm­ers' lands, we are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to de­cide which is more im­por­tant to T&T right now, food or rail. "We want to see de­vel­op­ment but not at the ex­pense of de­stroy­ing farm­ers' liveli­hoods."

De­onar­ine said the ques­tion of com­pen­sa­tion to hun­dreds of res­i­dents and farm­ers re­mains unan­swered. "Is the Gov­ern­ment pre­pared to fork out mil­lions of dol­lars in com­pen­sa­tion to all who will be dis­placed by the rail?"

ABOVE: ?Anil Ram­nar­ine, right, pres­i­dent of the Cunu­pia Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion with his work­ers in a pep­per field.

De­onar­ine said Nid­co, the ex­e­cut­ing agent for the rail project, in­vit­ed res­i­dents and farm­ers to two con­sul­ta­tions on the mat­ter and post­poned them un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly. "Hun­dreds of farm­ers turned up in hired max­is last Mon­day at the Min­istry of Works' Port-of-Spain of­fice for the first con­sul­ta­tion on­ly to see a sign on the door stat­ing it was post­poned to an un­spec­i­fied date. "They turned up at Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du School in St Au­gus­tine the fol­low­ing Tues­day for the sec­ond one and met the gates shut. "It was De­vant Ma­haraj from the Ma­ha Sab­ha who opened the gate and let them in and they held their own con­sul­ta­tion." De­onar­ine is charg­ing that Nid­co is not se­ri­ous about the con­sul­ta­tions and was not pre­pared for that kind of re­sponse from farm­ers.

Farm­ers: They will de­stroy us

Sev­er­al young farm­ers who may be dis­placed by the rail were wa­ter­ing their crops or har­vest­ing in their Cunu­pia fields last Mon­day. Most of them worked on fam­i­ly plots, some pri­vate­ly owned, some State-owned. Dhan­raj Sankar point­ed to re­serve for­est at the back of their fields and won­dered why the Gov­ern­ment didn't use it for the rail lines. "There are hun­dreds of farm­ers in Cunu­pia. If they dis­place us they will de­stroy us. "If they con­sult with us, we can help them find al­ter­na­tive routes." Tri­cia Latch­man, 30, a moth­er of two, was reap­ing cu­cum­bers in a field she cul­ti­vates with her hus­band. She has no idea what she will do if the land is tak­en. Shawn Latch­man, wa­ter­ing his ochroes, said, "This is our bread and but­ter." Joel Soogrim, 23, on­ly re­cent­ly start­ed plant­i­ng but the train­line will pass di­rect­ly through his field if im­ple­ment­ed. Yel­low flow­ers cov­ered Ramesh Ram­sa­roop's ochroes but the field is al­so ear­marked for the rail line. There are over 300 farm­ers in the Cunu­pia Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, half of them young men, pres­i­dent Anil Ram­nar­ine said.

As lit­tle dis­lo­ca­tion as pos­si­ble

Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said Trini­Train was hired to de­sign a rail sys­tem that will min­imise dis­lo­ca­tion as far as pos­si­ble and to con­sult with peo­ple to be af­fect­ed. "We ex­pect them to come back to us with the best de­sign and then the Gov­ern­ment will make a de­ci­sion," Im­bert told the Sun­day Guardian. The Min­is­ter said he spoke to some Es­mer­al­da res­i­dents who sug­gest­ed that the rail track could be lo­cat­ed one mile from the present pro­posed site. "They al­so sug­gest­ed Chin Chin Road could be an ac­cess. But we ex­pect the con­trac­tor to talk to the peo­ple. It's not the Min­istry's job." Im­bert said there was some mis­un­der­stand­ing about the "so-called con­sul­ta­tions", which were post­poned by Nid­co. He said the meet­ings were sup­posed to get pub­lic com­ment on the en­vi­ron­men­tal as­pect of the project for a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance, noth­ing more. He said he told Nid­co they went about or­gan­is­ing the pub­lic meet­ings the wrong way and has asked them to ad­dress the mat­ter again ob­serv­ing prop­er pro­ce­dures.

Im­bert stressed that the rail project is on­ly in the plan­ning stage and there is no bull­doz­ing go­ing on, as some claimed. Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Arnold Pig­got met with Cunu­pia farm­ers last Wednes­day at his Min­istry's St Clair of­fice and as­sured that farm­ers will be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to voice their con­cerns at up­com­ing con­sul­ta­tions re­lat­ing to the rail project. Urg­ing farm­ers not to spec­u­late on any neg­a­tive out­comes of the up­com­ing con­sul­ta­tions, he said the Gov­ern­ment will make every ef­fort to bal­ance the com­pet­ing claims and in­ter­ests of its var­i­ous stake­hold­ers. Pig­gott gave the as­sur­ance that the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion of farm­ers to­wards in­creas­ing food pro­duc­tion will be tak­en in­to ac­count. Nid­co's com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer, Ma­jid Mo­hammed said the con­sul­ta­tions were ad­ver­tised in all the news­pa­pers and fliers were mailed to res­i­dents in the Port-of-Spain, St Au­gus­tine and Ch­agua­nas ar­eas. He promised that meet­ings will be resched­uled and the new dates ad­ver­tised. Asked if Nid­co post­poned the con­sul­ta­tions af­ter not be­ing pre­pared for such a strong re­sponse from farm­ers and res­i­dents, Mo­hammed replied: "Nid­co is pre­pared for any­thing." A Nid­co Web site de­scribes the sta­tus of the rail project as, "On Track."

?Rail routes:

1. Along the East-West and North-South cor­ri­dors.

2. Will in­clude 10 train sta­tions along the pro­posed routes.

Rail ser­vice will com­prise:

1. Two ex­press train lines with a to­tal length of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 105 kms.

2. Will op­er­ate on an aer­i­al struc­ture (in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons)

3. Will op­er­ate on a grade ad­ja­cent to or with­in the me­di­an of ma­jor road­ways out­side of Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons.

?Nid­co facts on the TR­RP:

1. A De­sign-Build-Op­er­ate-Main­tain (DBOM) con­tract was signed be­tween the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, NID­CO, & Trini­Train Con­sor­tium in April 2008.

2. Trini­Train Con­sor­tium com­pris­es three promi­nent firms in the Rapid Rail in­dus­try: Bouygues Travaux Publics SA, Al­stom Trans­port SA, & RATP D�veloppe­ment SA

3. Phase 1 of the DBOM con­tract is cur­rent­ly un­der way and is sched­uled for com­ple­tion in 2010. This phase in­cludes da­ta col­lec­tion, route se­lec­tion and pre­lim­i­nary de­sign.

4. Phase 2 in­volves de­sign and con­struc­tion.

5. Phase 3 in­cludes op­er­a­tions and main­te­nance.z