Gail Alexan­der

Farm­ers have halt­ed protests fol­low­ing "sub­stan­tial" head­way and "enor­mous" progress in dis­cus­sions yes­ter­day with Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath. The farm­ers have agreed to ex­am­ine re­lo­ca­tion sites of­fered by the State. Head­way came in a two-hour meet­ing at Bharath's min­istry yes­ter­day. Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, of­fer­ing le­gal ad­vice, was part of Gov­ern­ment's team. Fol­low­ing the con­fer­ence, T&T Sheep and Goats Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Shi­raz Khan con­firmed there had been "sub­stan­tial head­way" while Mooni­lal said there had been "enor­mous progress."

The de­vel­op­ment came af­ter al­most two weeks of protest fol­low­ing the de­struc­tion of farm­ers' crops on lands at Ch­agua­nas and D'Abadie by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) last week Mon­day.

Protests cul­mi­nat­ed with a noisy con­fronta­tion, out­side the HDC's Port-of-Spain of­fice on Wednes­day, by farm­ers with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Farm­ers went in­to yes­ter­day's meet­ing main­tain­ing their ini­tial four de­mands for com­pen­sa­tion, land with tenure, a land use pol­i­cy and an apol­o­gy from Mooni­lal. Emerg­ing post-meet­ing, Khan said: "Protests will halt and we will con­tin­ue con­sul­ta­tions. Min­is­ters have agreed to go on Sat­ur­day morn­ing to vis­it the sites where crops were de­stroyed and see for them­selves and talks will con­tin­ue from there."

Farm­ers al­so agreed to vis­it al­ter­na­tive re­lo­ca­tion sites at Egypt Vil­lage on Sat­ur­day. Mooni­lal, look­ing more re­laxed than af­ter last week's ini­tial meet­ing with farm­ers, said: "This af­ter­noon's meet­ing was very cor­dial. We made enor­mous progress. Farm­ers have made sound pro­pos­als on the way for­ward, not just on the im­me­di­ate chal­lenge but the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. "I'm very op­ti­mistic we'll ar­rive at the win-win sit­u­a­tion we al­ways strive for," he said, thank­ing farm­ers. Bharath added: "It was an ex­treme­ly cor­dial meet­ing. You don't see any dis­grun­tled faces here. "We've moved along sig­nif­i­cant­ly to en­sure we come to the best pos­si­ble res­o­lu­tion for all. There's need for food and hous­ing. They're not com­pet­ing in­ter­ests."

Khan told re­porters: "We're not look­ing for con­fronta­tion. If we con­tin­ue to march you all won't have food and we won't have mon­ey.

"But we'll con­tin­ue to fight for our rights and en­sure we don't take any­thing that is just giv­en with­out just res­o­lu­tion for farm­ers. "We're hap­py with dis­cus­sions go­ing for­ward. We'll go back to farm­ers with the pack­age of­fered and we'll vis­it the re­spec­tive sites on Sat­ur­day as well as the al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tions of­fered and we'll re­turn to the min­istry with pro­pos­als from farm­ers." He said pack­ages would not be giv­en to any min­istry with­out farm­ers' in­put. Gov­ern­ment has promised that a note would go to Cab­i­net in three weeks on the land use pol­i­cy and farm­ers would con­tin­ue work­ing with the rel­e­vant min­istries on that. Plans al­so would be ex­am­ined to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of last week Mon­day's crop de­struc­tion by the HDC, it was stat­ed.

Khan said bull­doz­ing at Egypt Vil­lage was il­le­gal and farm­ers still held le­gal op­tions where that was con­cerned and was seek­ing ad­vice on it. He said com­pen­sa­tion costs have not been as­sessed yet but farm­ers want­ed ac­tu­al mar­ket val­ue. Khan's views were cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Dhanoo Sookoo. Khan said farm­ers still want­ed an apol­o­gy from Mooni­lal and hoped the Prime Min­is­ter "can fa­cil­i­tate us with fur­ther talks on that." When asked if he would apol­o­gise, Mooni­lal said, with a laugh:

"Let's say we're con­tin­u­ing di­a­logue. We have to ex­am­ine the time. I think there was a lim­it. I don't know if the time has ex­pired but let's do the vis­its on Sat­ur­day (to­mor­row)."

Farm­ers de­nied UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er's "thug­gery" claims about their be­hav­iour to­wards the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing Wednes­day's protests. Khan said: "Mr Warn­er should look at the tape. You re­porters were there. You know we didn't do what he claims. We de­serve an apol­o­gy from Mr Warn­er." Sookoo added: "No­body touched the Prime Min­is­ter. We need her. Mr Warn­er was un­for­tu­nate­ly mis­in­formed. She had se­cu­ri­ty all around her." Ra­mad­har, com­ment­ing on the Warn­er al­le­ga­tions, said: "What hap­pened at to­day's meet­ing was very healthy and we must move on from that to­wards heal­ing this is­sue and must there­fore be care­ful we don't cre­ate hurt feel­ings by what we say." He added: "T&T is far too small. We need each oth­er. What­ev­er we do, we must work in har­mo­ny. Many farm­ers walked with us, worked with us, cam­paigned with us, this is our peo­ple. All T&T ben­e­fits from their work."