Rousil­lac farm­ers formed a hu­man bar­ri­cade to stop work­ers from the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion from en­ter­ing their pri­vate lands to con­struct two high ten­sion tow­ers.

The farm­ers said they have been plant­i­ng over four acres of lands at Grant Trace Ex­ten­sion for decades but with­in re­cent times, T&TEC of­fi­cials in­formed them that their plots will be ac­quired by the Com­mis­sion to fa­cil­i­tate the project.

When T&TEC’s heavy equip­ment lum­bered in­to the area, the farm­ers used their ve­hi­cles to block the ma­chin­ery from en­ter­ing the pri­vate lands. 

Farmer Mon­i­ca Kissoon said the Com­mis­sion’s ac­tions were gross­ly un­fair as T&TEC had failed to ne­go­ti­ate with them or al­low them the op­por­tu­ni­ty of eval­u­at­ing their land­hold­ings. 

“They are not com­ing for ne­go­ti­a­tions with us and this is wrong. On Thurs­day I got a no­tice that they were com­ing to do work on the lands. We came here and they tell us they will buss through the fence and do the work so all of us hold on to the wire and I tell them that they have to roll over me if they want to en­ter the line,” Kissoon said.

She added, “They are telling us they putting up two high ten­sion tow­ers in the land. They said that they get all the ap­provals but they have to get ap­proval from the landown­er first.”

She claimed T&TEC lat­er of­fered her $30,000 for land and $36,000 for the fence. Oth­er farm­ers were of­fered $130,000 per two-acre par­cel. Both of­fers were re­ject­ed and T&TEC did not ac­cept any counter-pro­pos­al, Kissoon added.

“The T&TEC po­lice car­ried big guns like we are crim­i­nals and the T&TEC of­fi­cial said our lands would be seized through com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion,” she ex­plained.

Mean­while, spokesper­son for the farm­ers Vedesh Bee­jai said T&TEC has in­di­cat­ed it will be us­ing Sec­tion 37 to ac­quire the land.

“This is a mis­use and abuse of Sec­tion 37 be­cause no rea­son­able ef­fort has been made by T&TEC to for­mal­ly ac­quire the land,” Bee­jai ex­plained.

He added, “A cou­ple of years T&TEC in­formed the farm­ers that they are pass­ing a high ten­sion wire and ac­quir­ing a por­tion of the land. No ne­go­ti­a­tions were arranged be­tween the farm­ers and the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Unit but on Thurs­day a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in­formed them that they will be en­ter­ing the lands with or with­out their per­mis­sion. The farm­ers erect­ed a fence and in­voked the Tres­pass Act.”

Bhopal Har­rykissoon said T&TEC was not deal­ing fair­ly with the farm­ers.

“They did not give us a chance to ne­go­ti­ate and come to a rea­son­able agree­ment,” Har­rykissoon said.

An­oth­er farmer De­vi­ka Ram­per­sad said T&TEC should pro­vide rea­son­able com­pen­sa­tion.

“This land is used for agri­cul­ture. We have our fruit trees and crops on this land,” she added. 

She said the farm­ers had cer­tifi­cates of ti­tles vest­ed in their name and it was un­fair for T&TEC to claim the lands with­out due process and com­pen­sa­tion.

An­oth­er farmer Per­sad Ram­per­sad said the farm­ers were fac­ing a grave in­jus­tice.

T&TEC: New cir­cuit, a crit­i­cal seg­ment of the elec­tric­i­ty grid

Mean­while, T&TEC, in a state­ment said it was pro­ceed­ing to erect trans­mis­sion lines from Union-Vil­lage, La Brea to Gand­hi Vil­lage, Debe.

The line in ques­tion, the Union/ Gand­hi 220KV cir­cuit, which pass­es through Fyz­abad and Rousil­lac, will serve as a sec­ondary back­up to take elec­tric­i­ty from the coun­try’s largest elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing com­pa­ny, Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) in La Brea, to T&TEC’s trans­mis­sion sub­sta­tion in Gand­hi Vil­lage, from where it will be dis­trib­uted across Trinidad. 

“TGU pro­vides ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent of Trinidad’s elec­tric­i­ty needs dur­ing day­light and 60 per cent at night. The new cir­cuit is, there­fore, a crit­i­cal seg­ment of the elec­tric­i­ty grid.”

T&TEC said in the event of emer­gency dam­age or fail­ure on the ex­ist­ing lines—the new cir­cuit will con­tin­ue to sup­ply elec­tric­i­ty to the coun­try, avoid­ing wide­spread out­ages. 

“On com­ple­tion, the Com­mis­sion will be able to trans­fer pow­er to the new cir­cuit to con­duct out­stand­ing main­te­nance work on the ex­ist­ing cir­cuit which is over 10 years old and, in its cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, can­not be tak­en out of ser­vice for any sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od to al­low pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance.”

The Com­mis­sion said the project is be­ing con­duct­ed un­der Sec­tion 37 of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion Act, Chap­ter 54:70, which al­lows T&TEC to “…cause stan­dards, to­geth­er with fit­tings and fix­ings to be erect­ed and elec­tric lines to be laid and car­ried through, across, over or un­der any street…through, over or un­der any en­closed or oth­er lands what­so­ev­er…. 

“The pro­posed path for the new Union/ Gand­hi 220kV cir­cuit is the most fea­si­ble op­tion iden­ti­fied by T&TEC’s en­gi­neers and mir­rors the ex­ist­ing cir­cuit from Union to Gand­hi,” the Com­mis­sion added.

“In the first in­stance has em­barked on a process of ne­go­ti­a­tion to com­pen­sate pri­vate landown­ers who will be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the in­stal­la­tion of this line. If these at­tempts at good-faith ne­go­ti­a­tions fail, the Com­mis­sion will be left with no op­tion but to com­pul­so­ri­ly ac­quire the af­fect­ed lands in the best in­ter­est of the pub­lic.”

T&TEC said of­fer let­ters have been is­sued to some and the oth­ers are in progress. 

“These of­fers were based on in­de­pen­dent val­u­a­tions. De­spite claims to the con­trary, the Com­mis­sion has made it­self avail­able for ne­go­ti­a­tion with the own­ers and is await­ing their re­sponse.”

The Com­mis­sion added, “It re­mains open to ne­go­ti­at­ing with the af­fect­ed landown­ers for rea­son­able com­pen­sa­tion but re­mains com­mit­ted to com­plet­ing in a time­ly fash­ion the in­stal­la­tion of the Union/Gand­hi 220kV cir­cuit which is vi­tal to meet­ing the trans­mis­sion re­quire­ments of its pow­er net­work in the na­tion’s best in­ter­ests.”