Gail Alexan­der

Dark days of es­ca­lat­ing food prices, short­ages and price goug­ing are loom­ing for con­sumers as a re­sult of Gov­ern­ment's bull­doz­ing of al­most $20 mil­lion worth of food crops-to build HDC hous­es-at Ch­agua­nas and D'Abadie on Mon­day. Protest­ing farm­ers whose crops were de­stroyed by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's bull­doz­ing, have called on farm­ers to don black and join in a demon­stra­tion near the Red House to­mor­row. "What hap­pened on Mon­day has made it a dark day for farm­ers in this coun­try and for cit­i­zens' food pro­duc­tion. Every­one needs to unite in this ef­fort,"said Shi­raz Khan, pres­i­dent of the T&T Sheep & Goat Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, yes­ter­day.

Khan con­firmed con­cerns about food prices as farm­ers from North and Cen­tral Trinidad con­tin­ued protests yes­ter­day against Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and HDC head Jear­lean John at Wood­ford Square and out­side the HDC build­ing in Port-of-Spain. Po­lice and Guard and Emer­gency of­fi­cers with ma­chine guns con­front­ed farm­ers who were "armed" on­ly with pump­kins, corn and oth­er ru­ined crops which they had brought to de­posit in front the HDC build­ing. Khan heaped scorn on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's halt­ing of the bull­doz­ing, say­ing she act­ed on­ly af­ter the bull­doz­ing of acres of crops was com­plet­ed.

Khan said: "They knew what they were go­ing to do. I blame the en­tire Cab­i­net for this." Khan re­ject­ed Gov­ern­ment's of­fer of al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tions for farm­ing. Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Dhanoo Sookoo added: "We call for Jear­lean John to please leave of­fice for those who are more fit to hold that of­fice."

Khan added: "May I add Mooni­lal to that too. The egg don't come with­out the fowl. We farm­ers know that. Two of them have to go." He said farm­ers held doc­u­ments which showed they had tenure for the land which HDC want­ed to use for hous­ing projects. He called on HDC to show proof of "own­er­ship". Crops de­stroyed in both lo­ca­tions on Mon­day in­clud­ed bo­di, sweet pota­toes, pineap­ple, cas­sa­va, peas, corn and oth­er veg­eta­bles.

Khan said the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank es­ti­mat­ed there was about $4 mil­lion in loans to farm­ers. He said to­tal worth of the crops could be es­ti­mat­ed by mul­ti­ply­ing this by four or five. Khan said he ex­pect­ed food prices to rise by "500 per cent." He added: "If farm­ers have to demon­strate about the amount of agri­cul­tur­al land that was de­stroyed, they would not be sell­ing any food on the mar­ket and it will cer­tain­ly cre­ate short­ages. "In fact we hope prices es­ca­late so peo­ple will un­der­stand how much T&T de­pends on farm­ers. "When you have 20 acres of cas­sa­va or bo­di bull­dozed by these wicked peo­ple, what you ex­pect-not short­ages?

"I ex­pect peo­ple will jack up prices. I ex­pect they'll take full ad­van­tage of price goug­ing from this week­end."

Khan thanked Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod for the apol­o­gy which McLeod de­liv­ered on the is­sue. He al­so ac­knowl­edged that Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah had donned a Fi­tun jer­sey and ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with pro­test­ers on Tues­day. But Khan said that was not enough and if Gov­ern­ment had re­spect­ed its man­i­festo promise, the HDC would not have bull­dozed farm­ers' crops. He said farm­ers were stick­ing to their four de­mands: "...Start­ing with an im­me­di­ate apol­o­gy from Mooni­lal whose min­istry de­stroyed farm­ers' lives. Every farmer must al­so be com­pen­sat­ed for the de­struc­tion," Khan said. "We al­so want writ­ten guar­an­tee that farm­ers will not be treat­ed this way again by any Gov­ern­ment and al­so, we want im­me­di­ate im­ple­men­ta­tion of the land use de­vel­op­ment pol­i­cy."

Khan said protests would move to the Red House block to­mor­row at 1.30 pm even though the Low­er House would not be sit­ting. The House is on a break since Per­sad-Bisses­sar and sev­er­al min­is­ters are over­seas. Khan said he was aware a House com­mit­tee would be in ses­sion to­mor­row. He added: "Farm­ers must take a lead­ing role. We're fed up and ready for change. The time has come for T&T to awak­en be­cause what is be­ing done to us will af­fect the liveli­hood of each cit­i­zen. "What will hap­pen with fu­ture food se­cu­ri­ty? You can put hous­es on arable land but you can't put farm­ers on non-arable land. When we walk around Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, we're walk­ing for the peo­ple of T&T."