Gail Alexan­der

The Gov­ern­ment would not be un­der im­me­di­ate pres­sure to build hous­es if Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal dis­trib­utes the 9,000 hous­es which the PNM left in an ad­vanced stage, PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence Hinds deemed as "im­moral" the Gov­ern­ment's move to bull­doze farm­ers' crops at Ch­agua­nas and D'Abadie to make way for hous­ing projects. Hinds said UNC, in Op­po­si­tion, had strong­ly con­demned the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion for sim­i­lar ac­tion and the UNC/Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was do­ing "pre­cise­ly the same thing." Hinds added: "We had left 9,000 hous­es in ad­vanced stages, ready for pur­chase or ten­an­cy by HDC clients, and I'd have thought that they would be work­ing hasti­ly to dis­trib­ute these. But in­stead they are dis­man­tling them as we've seen them do with Vic­to­ria Keyes, in Diego Mar­tin." "Hous­ing Min­is­ter Mooni­lal should be busy­ing him­self to make those hous­es avail­able to peo­ple and maybe then there would not be that im­me­di­ate pres­sure to build hous­es."

Hinds said: "I read with in­ter­est where a me­dia house pub­lished that 800 units were be­ing sac­ri­ficed for four farm­ers, but when farm­ers pro­duce, it's not just four of them ben­e­fit­ing alone from their pro­duce, or on­ly 3,200 peo­ple-it's the na­tion that ben­e­fits from their pro­duce." Hinds said the na­tion was "re­sound­ing" in its anger at the sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing the farm­ers, con­sid­er­ing the Gov­ern­ment's stat­ed pol­i­cy on food se­cu­ri­ty. He said there would al­ways be chal­lenges re­gard­ing land use as space be­came lim­it­ed. He said past PNM gov­ern­ments had brought agri­cul­tur­al lands in­to res­i­den­tial use, in­clud­ing in St James, St Clair, and oth­er places-as the pop­u­la­tion grew-and al­so at Pt Lisas for in­dus­tri­al pur­pos­es. He said the UNC al­so con­vert­ed 160 Orop­une acres.

Hinds added: "But we're con­cerned about the im­moral­i­ty of this par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion, since when we de­cid­ed how we would use land they were strong in their con­dem­na­tion of it and now de­spite promised new pol­i­cy, they're do­ing ex­act­ly the same thing. "Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath in Op­po­si­tion strong­ly con­demned the PNM and he's now hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with the is­sue and ob­ject­ing from with­in the Cab­i­net." Hinds called for Bharath to re­sign from the Cab­i­net af­ter dis­agree­ing with Mooni­lal on the land is­sue. He al­so called for Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod to re­sign af­ter McLeod's MSJ con­demned the bull­doz­ing.

Cit­ing sec­tion 75 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion on col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, Hinds said Cab­i­net mem­bers should speak with one voice. Hinds said when for­mer PNM Labour Min­is­ter Lar­ry Achong had dis­agreed with an is­sue, Achong had left the Cab­i­net. Call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to en­sure Sec­tion 75 (1) was ad­hered to, Hinds said if she did not act, the PM would be "con­tribut­ing to an abuse of the con­sti­tu­tion and dis­re­spect for col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty." Asked about re­sign­ing, Bharath said yes­ter­day that min­is­te­r­i­al ap­point­ments were the prime min­is­ter's pre­rog­a­tive. McLeod, when asked if he would re­sign, al­so said: "Mr Hinds and his PNM small maxi don't im­press me at all."