Richard Lord

Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is to of­fer protest­ing farm­ers at Mau­si­ca Road, D'Abadie and Ch­agua­nas fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion and an al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tion to pro­duce their crops. Mooni­lal said that yes­ter­day, min­utes af­ter re­turn­ing home from Lon­don af­ter a pri­vate vis­it over the East­er week­end. The farm­ers have been protest­ing against the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) us­ing bull­doz­ers to de­stroy their crops over the week­end. They have since tak­en le­gal ac­tion re­strain­ing the HDC from fur­ther de­struc­tion of their crops. Sev­er­al acres of the lands used by farm­ers were bull­dozed in or­der to con­struct hous­es.

On Tues­day, Bharath said he would in­ter­vene with a view to hav­ing the mat­ter re­solved,

Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day it was "re­gret­table" the sit­u­a­tion took the course it did and he was not in the coun­try to re­spond im­me­di­ate­ly. He said while in Lon­don he spoke with Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath and "we are go­ing to meet the farm­ers af­ter the Cab­i­net meet­ing to­mor­row (to­day)." Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment would be propos­ing ad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion to the farm­ers and al­so seek­ing to have them re­lo­cat­ed to more pro­duc­tive lands. He said he would pro­pose at to­day's meet­ing that the farm­ers or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives "ac­com­pa­ny us on a site vis­it on Fri­day." He said the farm­ers al­so would have se­cu­ri­ty of tenure if they agreed to re­lo­cate to an al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tion to pro­duce their crops.

Mooni­lal said he was con­fi­dent the farm­ers would ac­cept the com­pen­sa­tion and re­lo­ca­tion. He said the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to re­solv­ing the mat­ter in the in­ter­est of all con­cerned. The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the de­ci­sion to serve no­tice to the "il­le­gal" farm­ers were done with the ap­proval of the au­thor­i­ties. Sources al­so say the mat­ter was dis­cussed at a re­cent meet­ing of the Cab­i­net. On Tues­day Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar or­dered the bull­doz­ing of farm­ers' crops across the coun­try be halt­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. The farm­ers protest­ed in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.