Ali­cia Llanos

Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Re­sources Vas­ant Bharath says farm­ers whose crops were de­stroyed in Mau­si­ca on Mon­day should have been giv­en ap­pro­pri­ate time to reap their crops.Close to 100 acres of farm land at Cres­cent Gar­dens, Mau­si­ca Road, D'Abadie, were bull­dozed by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to clear the way for a new hous­ing project.Crops de­stroyed in­clud­ed sweet pota­toes, pineap­ple, bo­di, cas­sa­va, peas, corn and oth­er veg­eta­bles.

Yes­ter­day, Bharath who spoke with the me­dia af­ter meet­ing a del­e­ga­tion of farm­ers at the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Re­sources, St Clair, said the farm­ers should have been giv­en time to reap their crops be­fore the HDC moved to take con­trol of the lands."Where you get to the sit­u­a­tion where farm­ers have been plant­i­ng crops whether legal­ly or il­le­gal­ly you should give them the ap­pro­pri­ate time to reap their crops," he said.The min­is­ter said this should have been looked at "by the peo­ple go­ing in to give the farm­ers their (evic­tion) no­tices."He said the is­sues had stemmed from farm­ers not re­ceiv­ing land tenure be­cause slow process­es at the min­istry over the years.

Bharath said these farm­ers could not be held "ac­count­able to the State," be­cause it was the State's fault they were not grant­ed tenure in a time­ly man­ner. He said he had lim­it­ed in­flu­ence on the lands be­cause the lands were not un­der his min­istry.Bharath, how­ev­er, as­sured farm­ers he would in­ter­vene. He said planned to meet with act­ing Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Em­manuel George.The farm­ers, in protest ac­tion out­side the min­istry's of­fices in St Clair yes­ter­day, de­mand­ed com­pen­sa­tion and those re­spon­si­ble for clear­ing the land to be held ac­count­able.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety Da­hano Sookoo, Co­coa and Cof­fee In­dus­try Board of T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ter­race Hay­wood and pres­i­dent of the Sheep and Goat Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan, who met with Bharath, said farm­ers were de­mand­ing com­pen­sa­tion at mar­ket val­ue for their crops and an apol­o­gy from HDC's line Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal.Af­ter meet­ing Bharath, the farm­ers moved their protest to the HDC of­fices in Port-of-Spain.Farm­ers dumped the re­mains of the crops which were de­stroyed on Mon­day in front of the HDC's en­trance and de­mand­ed HDC chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Jear­lean John step down.