Gail Alexan­der

A cow­ard tak­ing a cheap am­a­teur­ish shot at the Prime Min­is­ter.

That’s how Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat yes­ter­day wrote off Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s at­tempt to link Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s To­ba­go goat farm to the state’s pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship with Mar­ilis­sa Farms Lim­it­ed (MF), a Pe­nal-based farm which spe­cialis­es in goats and sheep.

Mark raised con­cerns on the is­sue dur­ing a mo­tion in the Sen­ate.

But Ramb­harat slammed him, say­ing “It’s a friv­o­lous ridicu­lous mo­tion...this isn’t about live­stock ... It’s a cow­ard tak­ing a cheap shot at the Prime Min­is­ter.”

Ramb­harat de­tailed how the arrange­ment arose.

Mark de­mand­ed an­swers on how Mar­ilis­sa Farms got its part­ner­ship. He not­ed the farm was owned by Lin­coln Tack­o­ree, who al­so owns Gen­er­al Earth Movers. Mark said the UNC had is­sues with the method and man­ner in which the part­ner­ship was done. He said, “ap­par­ent­ly un­con­firmed re­ports” were that “no prop­er pro­cure­ment process­es” were done. He not­ed that five firms arose out of 13 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est – Mar­ilis­sa Farms, Khan’s Or­gan­ic Meat Prod­ucts, UWI, CDC Group of Com­pa­nies and Agri Fu­sion Ltd.

“How come a known PNM farmer won the bid?” he said.

Mark not­ed Mar­ilis­sa Farms was the largest goat/sheep farm in T&T. He point­ed out that the Prime Min­is­ter toured the farm among oth­ers in 2019.

“My in­for­ma­tion leads me to the con­clu­sion on the ba­sis of fact that the Prime Min­is­ter is al­so in­volved in the goat/sheep busi­ness in To­ba­go and has the largest one on over 100 acres of land,” Mark said.

He said when he saw the Mar­ilis­sa Farms trans­ac­tion and Row­ley vis­it­ing MF, “The time will come very quick­ly when we’ll call for a foren­sic in­quiry in­to this trans­ac­tion be­cause I’ve been in­formed the To­ba­go farm now has close to 4,000 heads of sheep and goats.” He said there was “a sit­u­a­tion” of the “re­la­tion­ship” be­tween Mar­ilis­sa Farm’s own­er and the Gov­ern­ment’s leader’s To­ba­go farm.

“We have a prob­lem with politi­cians us­ing peo­ple’s re­sources to pro­mote their own pri­vate in­ter­est,” he claimed

Mark asked what re­la­tion­ship, if any, ex­ists be­tween Tack­o­ree and Row­ley, since Tack­o­ree owns the largest sheep farm in Trinidad and Row­ley owns the largest in To­ba­go. He said his “re­search led me to con­clude” Row­ley is very com­mer­cial­ly ac­tive (on the To­ba­go farm) and meat is now be­ing sold from there to the lo­cal T&T mar­ket. Mark said Row­ley was an ac­tive dues-pay­ing T&T Sheep and Goat So­ci­ety mem­ber. He claimed Gov­ern­ment mem­bers were en­ter­ing com­mer­cial busi­ness­es “be­hind the scenes” and the Op­po­si­tion would re­veal those who be­came “su­per-rich” dur­ing the term.

“I don’t want to tell you what’s go­ing on in To­ba­go - some high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have be­come land de­vel­op­ers, builders of prop­er­ty com­pet­ing with HDC, palaces on To­ba­go’s hill cost­ing mil­lions.”

Eval­u­a­tion team made rec­om­men­da­tions

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat says there’s no lease agree­ment gov­ern­ing the Mar­il­lisa Farms arrange­ment - on­ly a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) since the site has to be resur­veyed, the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC) on the Aripo Land has to be ex­cised and squat­ters have to be re­moved.

Ramb­harat said if Mark want­ed in­for­ma­tion, he (Mark) had sat on Par­lia­ment’s Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture com­mit­tee and could have sum­moned the min­istry or him­self to query it.

De­tail­ing how the MOU arose, Ramb­harat said in No­vem­ber 2015 he de­cid­ed the min­istry need­ed to do an as­sess­ment of the live­stock sec­tor. In 2016, Pro­fes­sor Mar­lon Knights, was en­gaged to do this and pro­duced a re­port in 2017.

Ramb­harat said he re­viewed it in March 2018 and gave it to Cab­i­net, which ap­proved re­port rec­om­men­da­tions. He said Knights sur­veyed farms in­clud­ing Mar­il­lisa Farms, analysing op­er­a­tions. Rec­om­men­da­tions in­clud­ed re­align­ing live­stock ac­tiv­i­ties and strate­gic pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship, in­clud­ing for beef and small ru­mi­nants on un­der­utilised min­istry farms and the Aripo sta­tion.

Ramb­harat said Cab­i­net ap­proved the re­port. He said the Aripo farm had been run­down and the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment had built the IDC on the farm with­out sur­vey or lease.

He said in May 2018 he told NUGFW head James Lam­bert what was be­ing planned for Aripo and work­ers there would be re­de­ployed. He asked if the NUGFW would put in for the land but he said Lam­bert de­clined and didn’t ob­ject to what Gov­ern­ment pro­posed. On that ba­sis, in­vi­ta­tions were is­sued pub­licly in Au­gust-Oc­to­ber 2018 re­gard­ing the land and were in the me­dia. He said 13 in­vi­ta­tions were re­ceived and the five firms named were in­volved.

Ramb­harat said an eval­u­a­tion team - head­ed by Min­istry of Fi­nance per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Vish­nu Dhan­paul - re­port­ed to Cab­i­net in De­cem­ber 2018 mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions. Apart from Mar­il­lisa Farms, sec­ond-ranked was Khan’s Or­gan­ic Meat Prod­ucts. Ramb­harat said much of the land Mar­il­lisa Farms’ us­ing is for­est re­serve which can’t be touched. The MOU doesn’t in­clude quar­ry­ing.

Ramb­harath said he’s some­times hap­py Row­ley is a farmer and some­times he’s not af­ter de­mands the PM makes on him as a farm­ing stake­hold­er.

“I’m proud to see the Prime Min­is­ter demon­strat­ing po­lit­i­cal sup­port and at a per­son­al lev­el to step up in his own farm. He’s in live­stock farm­ing a long time, when he han­dles a bun­dle of grass, (you see) he’s born to do that and he’s been do­ing it all his life.”