A de­ci­sion was tak­en by the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2014 to re­move the covenant that pro­tect­ed Ca­roni state lands and made it pos­si­ble for them to be sold by the re­cip­i­ents. There was no stip­u­la­tion on what the land that is be­ing sold could now be used for–it could ei­ther be res­i­den­tial, agri­cul­tur­al or com­mer­cial.

For­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath had spo­ken in March 2015 about the de­ci­sion back then when he promised that all the Ca­roni VSEP pack­ages, which in­clud­ed land, would be hand­ed over.

When the ini­tial de­ci­sion was made to dis­trib­ute the land to ex-Ca­roni work­ers as part of the VSEP pack­age it was on­ly in­tend­ed for agri­cul­tur­al and res­i­den­tial pur­pos­es.

When the PP took of­fice in 2010, then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan with­drew a court claim left by the pre­vi­ous Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion which chal­lenged a rul­ing by Jus­tice Lennox Deyals­ingh in favour of the work­ers. Deyals­ingh's rul­ing stat­ed that the work­ers should have ac­cess to the lands by 2006, but for­mer prime min­is­ter Man­ning chal­lenged that. Ram­lo­gan had that chal­lenge with­drawn, free­ing up the VSEP process. The PP's Cab­i­net lat­er agreed and ap­proved the lift­ing of the sale pro­tec­tion around Ca­roni lands and made the land trans­fer­able, even for com­mer­cial use.

Since then, there have been ques­tions in the pub­lic do­main about big busi­ness­es ac­cess­ing the state land for cheap and set­ting up shop.

Fast for­ward some eight years lat­er and Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment & Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings is at the cen­tre of al­le­ga­tions that he ac­cessed and oc­cu­pied state lands for his com­pa­ny, Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed. While he ad­dressed the is­sue ear­li­er in the week, there are still many unan­swered ques­tions.

Dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress's Mon­day Night Fo­rum last week, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar once again brought the is­sue of Cum­mings in­to the pub­lic do­main, call­ing for an ex­pla­na­tion of how he came to have ac­cess to the lands in Cou­va.

On Mon­day, Cum­mings agreed to an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, but by Tues­day he had ad­dressed the mat­ter to the me­dia and re­spond­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, say­ing that every creed and race should have equal ac­cess to the lands.

Cum­mings, in de­fend­ing his ac­cess to the lands on Tues­day, list­ed sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies that are now sit­u­at­ed on state lands but did not say when or how he was able to ac­cess the space.

He list­ed com­pa­nies, some with links to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, in­clud­ing Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SIS), the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny favoured by the UNC for over a bil­lion dol­lars in state projects be­tween the 2010 to 2015 pe­ri­od.

Cum­mings gave a de­tailed list of some 15 state land parcels oc­cu­pied by the busi­ness­es. The list in­clud­ed well-known con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, a sand­blast­ing com­pa­ny, a mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny and a bro­ker­age firm.

Minister of Youth Development and National Service, Foster Cummings

SHASTRI BOODAN

Lit­tle so­cial me­dia foot­print on Cum­mings' com­pa­ny, Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed

There is very lit­tle so­cial me­dia foot­print on Pi­cal, save for two ad­min­is­tra­tive em­ploy­ees list­ed on LinkedIn. The com­pa­ny it­self does not have a web­site. The Sun­day Guardian ex­am­ined the com­pa­ny's reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments and ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny's Ar­ti­cles of In­cor­po­ra­tion, Cum­mings is list­ed as a gen­er­al con­trac­tor when the com­pa­ny was first reg­is­tered in 2002.

In 2003, the com­pa­ny changed its ad­dress from 46 Fa­bi­en Road, Gas­par­il­lo, to 140 South­ern Main Road, Cou­va.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said that Cum­mings re­ceived sev­er­al state con­tracts to­talling mil­lions of dol­lars. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in 2019 Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed was award­ed the con­tract to de­mol­ish a build­ing at Besson Street through se­lec­tive ten­der­ing.

Sun­day Guardian asked Cum­mings to ex­plain, in­ter alia, the scope of work of his com­pa­ny Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed han­dles and whether there were any con­flicts of in­ter­est in how his com­pa­nies were award­ed state con­tracts.

"I have al­ready ad­dressed the is­sues raised and at this point, I do not have any fur­ther com­ments," Cum­mings said.

He was al­so asked when Pi­cal moved to the lands in Cou­va but he did not re­spond.

No cur­rent val­u­a­tion fig­ure for Ca­roni lands

There is no cur­rent val­u­a­tion fig­ure for the Ca­roni lands. The lat­est fig­ure is about 18 years old. For­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat said that there are on­ly two val­u­a­tions that he knows about.

"Some­time in the 1990s Ca­roni faced be­ing 'tech­ni­cal­ly in­sol­vent' from an ac­count­ing per­spec­tive. It means its li­a­bil­i­ties ex­ceed­ed its as­sets. As a bond is­suer to sup­port its bor­row­ings that could have been prob­lem­at­ic," he said.

"To fix that Ray­mond and Pierre was com­mis­sioned to do a val­u­a­tion on some of its land as­sets. That in­clud­ed the bun­ga­lows oc­cu­pied by Staff em­ploy­ees. The val­u­a­tion was suf­fi­cient to show more as­sets than li­a­bil­i­ties.

"The sec­ond val­u­a­tion was done around 2003 by Ter­ra Caribbean. It was re­strict­ed to the bun­ga­lows to be sold to the staff em­ploy­ees un­der the VSEP. That val­u­a­tion pro­duced prices for each oc­cu­pied bun­ga­low," Ramb­harat said.

Ramb­harat said that the sec­ond val­u­a­tion was on­ly on the bun­ga­lows and that there were about 168 bun­ga­lows, each bun­ga­low and land val­ued at $500,000.

"So that is a to­tal val­u­a­tion of about $84 mil­lion," he said.

A 2019 Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee meet­ing min­utes show that at its clo­sure, "Ca­roni (1975) had sig­nif­i­cant re­ceiv­ables in the amount of $84.453 mil­lion from a broad range of Gov­ern­ment Min­istries and State En­ter­pris­es, as well as oth­er com­mer­cial pur­chasers of Ca­roni prod­ucts and ser­vices in­clud­ing sand fill, mo­lasses, food crops, bagasse sup­pli­ers and lease rentals."

The com­pa­ny took the po­si­tion that those debts would be ir­recov­er­able and made a pro­vi­sion

of $77 mil­lion.

It was al­so not­ed that the fol­low­ing agen­cies owed Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed.

* the Board of In­land Rev­enue owed Ca­roni (1975) $6.624 mil­lion;

* Ca­roni Green Lim­it­ed owed Ca­roni (1975) an amount of $109,752 for salaries paid pri­or to its

in­cor­po­ra­tion;

*the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries (MALF) owed Ca­roni (1975) $200,963 for

salaries paid to the Cane Farm­ers Reg­u­lar­iza­tion Unit sub­se­quent to the trans­fer to the said

Min­istry; and

* the MALF owed Ca­roni (1975) $55,214 for ex­pens­es re­lat­ing for Ca­roni’s man­age­ment of the

La Brea Fish­er Folk project.

Of­fi­cials from Ca­roni in­di­cat­ed that they were li­ais­ing with the en­ti­ties to re­cov­er the out­stand­ing debts but as­sured the com­mit­tee that the set­tle­ment of these pay­ments would re­main in liq­ui­da­tion.

Be­tween the years 2014 and 2015, Ca­roni (1975) Ltd’s Cash and Cash Bal­ances sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­creased by over $65 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to find­ings dis­closed in the 2019 PAEC, in re­sponse to ques­tions posed on the rea­sons for the de­crease, it was stat­ed that "the de­crease in Cash and Cash Bal­ance be­tween the years 2014 and 2015 in the sum of $62,539,047 was due to a re­fund of res­i­den­tial lots re­ceipt in the sum of $57,586,500 as at June 2015, and $4,952,547 for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture."

In Jan­u­ary 2015 the Gov­ern­ment took the de­ci­sion to pro­vide the res­i­den­tial ser­vice lots to for­mer em­ploy­ees at no cost; fur­ther­more the re­stric­tive covenants with re­gards to the trans­fer of lots and the time frame for build­ing the hous­es were re­moved. Ca­roni re­fund­ed em­ploy­ees who made full or par­tial pay­ments for res­i­den­tial ser­vice lots and there­after put in place the in­fra­struc­ture at Ca­roni’s cost for vary­ing the leas­es to re­flect the re­moval of the covenants.

Jairam: Dur­ing my tenure on­ly one com­pa­ny sought ac­cess to the state lands

For­mer min­is­ter of land and ma­rine re­sources Jairam Seemu­n­gal said that dur­ing his tenure from 2013 to 2015, there were nev­er any al­le­ga­tions or ru­mours of land fraud. He said that on­ly one com­pa­ny, a Cen­tral-based con­crete com­pa­ny, sought ac­cess to the state lands and it was tak­en to Cab­i­net to be ap­proved.

He said he was nev­er aware of any oth­er com­mer­cial com­pa­nies be­ing grant­ed ac­cess to the state lands in Per­se­ver­ance in cen­tral Trinidad.

He was asked about SIS ac­cess­ing state lands, but Seemu­n­gal said it was a mat­ter be­tween SIS and the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) and that the EM­BD did not fall un­der his port­fo­lio. At the time, the Min­istry of Hous­ing had con­trol of the EM­BD and its line min­is­ter was Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

Mooni­lal has not re­spond­ed to ques­tions on this mat­ter.