Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Three mil­lion dol­lars. That is the hefty price tag two land-grab­bing farm­ers are de­mand­ing for man­sions they il­le­gal­ly con­struct­ed on 148 acres of State-owned lands at Pineap­ple Smith Lands in D'Abadie. Whether tax­pay­ers would be sad­dled with this mil­lion-dol­lar debt was still in de­bate as up to late last night Gov­ern­ment sources told Sun­day Guardian the is­sue was still be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed. "The re­quest is sim­ply lu­di­crous. These farm­ers were squat­ting and are now de­mand­ing un­rea­son­able sums of com­pen­sa­tion. It is re­al­ly get­ting out of hand. The Gov­ern­ment is set­ting a bad prece­dent by bar­gain­ing with farm­ers whose crops were bull­dozed. It should nev­er reach to this. No mat­ter how you look at it squat­ting is il­le­gal. Can we af­ford to pay huge sums to all farm­ers who con­struct hous­es on lands?," a source asked.

Ac­cord­ing to the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act 1994 the farm­ers are not en­ti­tled to any com­pen­sa­tion. Sec­tion 12: Part III (c) en­ti­tled Com­pen­sa­tion states: "Where the val­ue of the land is in­creased by rea­son of the use there­of or of any premis­es there­on in man­ner which could be re­strained by any Court, or is con­trary to law, or is detri­men­tal to the health of the in­mates of the premis­es or to the pub­lic health, the amount of that in­crease shall not be tak­en in­to ac­count." The State lands are ear­marked for a 800-unit hous­ing de­vel­op­ment by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). The de­fi­ant farm­ers have been each squat­ting on 74 acres of land and opt­ed to con­struct sprawl­ing con­crete man­sions next to their pro­duce to se­cure their spots. They are both de­mand­ing $1.5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion.

Af­ter serv­ing quit no­tices to the farm­ers ear­li­er this year, the HDC moved in on the lands at Mauis­ca and at Egypt Vil­lage in Ch­agua­nas on East­er Mon­day to com­mence con­struc­tion. Farm­ers protest­ed the move, but the State has in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue with the project. Com­pen­sa­tion and al­ter­na­tive lands are now be­ing sought for the af­fect­ed farm­ers. But even as the State moves to re­lo­cate the farm­ers to a 200-acre plot of land off Jer­ming­ham Av­enue in Egypt Vil­lage, farm­ers were caught once again squat­ting on the land dur­ing a tour of the pro­posed re­lo­ca­tion site yes­ter­day. Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath ex­pressed sur­prise at the squat­ters yes­ter­day but as­sured the re­lo­cat­ing farm­ers that all would be fa­cil­i­tat­ed. A three-acre four plot of land is al­so be­ing sought for re­lo­cat­ing farm­ers West of Pi­ar­co Air­port. The State is fac­ing a fight from farm­ers who oc­cu­py State lands through­out the coun­try. A Guardian team vis­it­ed the area on Fri­day and sim­i­lar cas­es are al­so oc­cur­ring at Broomage Fair­field in Princes Town, Union Hallin San Fer­nan­do and in Ex­change Vil­lage in Cou­va.

Mean­while, Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) are ex­pect­ed to meet in an emer­gency ses­sion to­day to dis­cuss the is­sue of hous­ing that forms part of five per cent agree­ment the union set­tled for. This af­ter, dis­grun­tled mem­bers said that con­cerns have been raised about whether the HDC would be able to fol­low through with the agree­ment due to the de­mand for hous­ing. "There are over 35,000 pub­lic ser­vants and ac­cord­ing to HDC there are on­ly 6,000 plus hous­es. We need clar­i­ty on this is­sue be­cause the Prime Min­is­ter and the PSA agreed to hous­ing ben­e­fits for all pub­lic ser­vants. What is be­ing put in the pub­lic do­main is say­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent. "We need PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke or the Prime MIn­is­ter to come clean on this mat­ter," a con­cerned work­er said. At­tempts to con­tact PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke proved fu­tile yes­ter­day.