Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A to­tal of 11,151 res­i­den­tial deeds and agri­cul­tur­al leas­es have been dis­trib­uted to for­mer Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed work­ers—but a to­tal of 4,526 leas­es are still to be de­liv­ered due to var­i­ous rea­sons, in­clud­ing in­cor­rect con­tact in­for­ma­tion sub­mit­ted or the in­abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with some re­cip­i­ents.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Land and Fish­eries, Avinash Singh, con­firmed this on Wednes­day in Par­lia­ment, re­ply­ing to UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh on the num­ber of res­i­den­tial deeds and agri­cul­tur­al leas­es yet to be dis­trib­uted to for­mer Ca­roni work­ers.

Singh said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to dis­trib­ute leas­es to for­mer work­ers.

He said dis­tri­b­u­tion of leas­es falls un­der the am­bit of the fol­low­ing agen­cies—Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed (re­spon­si­ble for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of all res­i­den­tial deeds), Es­tate and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EM­BD) (dis­tri­b­u­tion of two-acre agri­cul­tur­al leas­es in sev­en agri­cul­tur­al es­tates), Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands (COSL) re­spon­si­ble for dis­tri­b­u­tion of two-acre agri­cul­tur­al leas­es in ten agri­cul­tur­al es­tates in Cen­tral and South).

“To date, a to­tal of 11,151 res­i­den­tial deeds and agri­cul­tur­al leas­es have been dis­trib­uted—4,778 res­i­den­tial leas­es by Ca­roni (1975) Ltd, 2,776 agri­cul­tur­al leas­es by EM­BD and 3,597 agri­cul­tur­al leas­es by COSL,” Singh said.

“A to­tal of 4,562 leas­es re­main out­stand­ing to be ex­e­cut­ed,” he added.

At Sep­tem­ber 30, these in­volved 3,806 res­i­den­tial leas­es un­der Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed; 108 agri­cul­tur­al leas­es un­der the EM­BD; and 612 agri­cul­tur­al leas­es un­der the COSL.

On when com­ple­tion of out­stand­ing leas­es will be at­tained, Singh said there are many lit­i­ga­tion mat­ters in­volv­ing con­trac­tors and a num­ber of sites haven’t been hand­ed over by EM­BD to Ca­roni for res­i­den­tial leas­es to be com­plet­ed.

“We have cas­es of in­cor­rect con­tact in­for­ma­tion, or the in­abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with some of these re­cip­i­ents. Many of the agri­cul­tur­al leas­es are out­stand­ing.

At­tempts have been made to con­tact peo­ple with no suc­cess. There are al­so lit­i­ga­tion mat­ters re­lat­ing to let­ters of ad­min­is­tra­tion, let­ters of es­tates, so it would be legal­ly im­pos­si­ble to give a time­frame to ad­ju­di­cate on the is­sue,” Singh added.

On the peo­ple Ca­roni had been try­ing to get in touch with, Singh said the list was pub­lished in dai­ly pa­pers in the last ten years.

“Out of that list, the orig­i­nal list of 1,751 names, 1,100-plus peo­ple would have ap­proached the min­istry and now there are 500-plus peo­ple that are still miss­ing in ac­tion and these peo­ple—some may have mi­grat­ed, some are in prison—and there are var­i­ous rea­sons why we can’t deal with the bal­ance of those,” he said.

Mean­while, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the ex­pect­ed date for com­ple­tion of the Ra­mai Trace Hin­du School is this month, but she could not con­firm it will be open in time for Di­vali.

Gads­by-Dol­ly spoke fol­low­ing UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal’s queries.

She said, “The ex­pect­ed date for the com­ple­tion of works at Ra­mai Trace Hin­du School is No­vem­ber 2023, as pro­vid­ed by our project man­agers, the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NMTS).

“A snag­ging ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed on Oc­to­ber 18, 2023, to en­sure that works are com­plet­ed to the spec­i­fied stan­dard. The date for the for­mal open­ing will be ad­vised sub­se­quent­ly.”

On whether, af­ter eight years of clo­sure, it may be ready as a “Di­vali gift”, as Di­vali is No­vem­ber 12, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “I said No­vem­ber and of course we’d love for it to be opened for Di­vali but we can­not con­firm that—we want to en­sure it’s fin­ished up to the ex­pect­ed stan­dard and if it is be­fore that, then we all win.”

Giv­ing an up­date on the fu­ture use of the Debe-Pe­nal Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Gads­by-Dol­ly said UWI has pro­posed the re-pur­pos­ing of the Debe-Pe­nal Cam­pus to es­tab­lish a Glob­al School of Med­i­cine, an off­shore med­ical school, with­in its Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences at the UWI South Cam­pus.