At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Camille Robin­son-Reg­is says mon­ey is out­stand­ing to for­mer pri­vate Ca­roni cane farm­ers be­cause they have not ac­cept­ed the pay­ment.

At a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Thurs­day evening, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised to pay the out­stand­ing sum of $110 mil­lion to the farm­ers if she is elect­ed in­to of­fice.

How­ev­er, Robin­son-Reg­is said the fail­ure to pay the cane farm­ers was not due to a lack of fi­nances.

In an in­ter­view fol­low­ing the open­ing of the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones Au­thor­i­ty of­fices in St Clair yes­ter­day, she said, “We have been wait­ing pa­tient­ly for the oth­ers who have not ac­cept­ed to come for­ward and that is what we’ve been wait­ing on.

“There has nev­er been an is­sue with re­gard to the pay­ment that is due to them but they have to ac­cept what is be­ing of­fered.”

Some of the cane farm­ers had re­ject­ed the gov­ern­ment’s of­fer to pay the $57 mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion in two tranch­es.

While more than 3,000 farm­ers were paid, oth­ers, through their at­tor­neys, ar­gued that the pay­out was half of what was owed to them.

Robin­son-Reg­is en­cour­aged the farm­ers to come for­ward and ac­cept the pay­ment.

“We had al­so de­ter­mined that some of the farm­ers would be giv­en land, if they did not have a house spot they would be giv­en a house spot. If they did not have agri­cul­tur­al plots we give them agri­cul­tur­al plots and near­ly all if not all al­ready re­ceived,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said since 2017 she has been lead­ing a le­gal team to en­sure the pay­ments were made to the farm­ers.

“My gov­ern­ment made the first pay­ment of $30 mil­lion be­fore the PNM came in­to of­fice in 2015. Row­ley said not one red or black cent for them, none, they stopped the tranch­es,” she claimed.