Yvonne Ba­boolal

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has de­nied al­le­ga­tions by Sheep and Goat Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Shi­raz Khan that the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to vot­er pad by putting hous­es on agri­cul­tur­al land.Mooni­lal said the sites in con­tention at Pineap­ple Smith lands, D'Abadie and Egypt Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas, were se­lect­ed long be­fore the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Gov­ern­ment came in­to pow­er.Ac­cord­ing to news­pa­per re­ports yes­ter­day, some 19 farm­ers at the cen­tre of the con­tro­ver­sy were stand­ing in the way of the con­struc­tion of Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) homes that could house 7,104 peo­ple.Khan is con­tend­ing that the Pineap­ple Smith lands fall in­to the D'Abadie/Omeara con­stituen­cy which he said Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts won by about 1,000 votes and which was mar­gin­al.He said Egypt Vil­lage fell in­to Ch­agua­nas East, an­oth­er mar­gin­al for­mer­ly held by the PNM, but won by the PP's Stephen Cadiz in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion.Mooni­lal, re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the T&T Guardian, said via a text mes­sage yes­ter­day: "The se­lec­tion of the site at Egypt was done in 2005 and at D'Abadie in 2008.

"So it (al­le­ga­tions of vot­er padding) could not have been our ob­jec­tive."Asked if vot­er padding in the mar­gin­al seats could have been an ob­jec­tive of pre­vi­ous PNM regimes, the min­is­ter replied: "Maybe. But is not our ob­jec­tive since we met those sites in ad­vanced stages of plan­ning."Mooni­lal said the min­istry's next meet­ing with farm­ers had been set for Thurs­day.He said farm­ers were to re­port on the quan­tum for com­pen­sa­tion for the lands they oc­cu­pied by next Mon­day.Khan, al­so vice-pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun), in­sist­ed yes­ter­day that the re­al is­sue be­hind the farm­ers/ HDC row was vot­er padding.

"It's all about vot­er padding," he said."The Gov­ern­ment is do­ing the same thing they ac­cused the PNM of do­ing."Khan said there were 400 hous­es at Carlsen Field in Cen­tral and oth­er ar­eas which were un­oc­cu­pied."The Gov­ern­ment wants to build hous­es in cer­tain con­stituen­cies," he charged.Khan and pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Food­crop Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Ter­rence Hay­wood, said they were not back­ing down from their stand that agri­cul­tur­al lands must be kept for agri­cul­ture."Food first...Farm­ers are on­ly oc­cu­py­ing small pieces of agri­cul­tur­al land," Hay­wood said.

"When coun­tries from which we im­port food start hold­ing back their prod­ucts for them­selves, what will be­come of us?" Hay­wood said they were de­mand­ing a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and if the land was not kept for agri­cul­ture, they would take the mat­ter to court.Khan de­nied Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John's state­ment that the farm­ers were oc­cu­py­ing the State lands il­le­gal­ly."Farm­ers' leas­es ex­pired 30 years ago and the State nev­er re­newed them, but they have been pay­ing tax­es," he said."In fact, the farm­ers have al­ready paid tax­es for up to De­cem­ber 31, 2011."John said the two ba­sic needs of food and shel­ter need­ed to be bal­anced."Land is a fi­nite re­source...You just have so much of it," said John.She urged farm­ers to sit down and talk over the mat­ter with Mooni­lal who, she said, has not shut the door on them.