SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

When Bal­ram Ram­saran re­ceived his two-acre plot of land in 2010 fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd in Wa­ter­loo, he was over­joyed. Ram­saran, 63, had worked at Ca­roni for 26 years as a boil­er/op­er­a­tor. His joy soon turned to sor­row when he re­alised the land was un­der­de­vel­oped and lacked ir­ri­ga­tion.

“The Gov­ern­ment promised to dig ponds for us. But this nev­er hap­pened,” Ram­saran said in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian.

The fa­ther of three spent a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of his Vol­un­tary Sep­a­ra­tion of Em­ploy­ment (VSEP) mon­ey to fill and de­vel­op the land to earn a liveli­hood.

How­ev­er, af­ter cul­ti­vat­ing his first crop, thieves swooped down on his farm and cart­ed away his pro­duce.

“The ban­dits al­ways steal­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of my crops,” he com­plained.

Ram­saran has suf­fered tremen­dous loss­es with prae­di­al lar­ce­ny. Last year, his earn­ings were a mere $3,000. This year, his prof­it so far was $1,500.

He ad­mit­ted to fight­ing tooth and nail to sur­vive. To com­pound mat­ters, Ram­saran is yet to re­ceive his res­i­den­tial lot at Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road, which he want­ed to give to his son, who is rent­ing.

“The wait is frus­trat­ing. I am feel­ing be­trayed. To me, the work­ers were tak­en for a ride.”

Ram­saran said many of his neigh­bours and friends who worked at Ca­roni have died wait­ing for their lands. “The stress and un­cer­tain­ty killed them.”

Look­ing dazed and con­fused, Michael Mar­shall, 73, re­count­ed how a res­i­den­tial lot was promised to him at Ku­mars­ingh Av­enue, Wa­ter­loo. His wait seems nev­er-end­ing. “It has been more than 15 years, and ah can’t get my lot yet. I might die be­fore I get it,” said Mar­shall, who worked with Ca­roni as a me­chan­ic.

On the sprawl­ing land, a house was un­der con­struc­tion. There are elec­tric­i­ty poles and pipeline con­nec­tions in the area. Mar­shall said peo­ple have been en­croach­ing on the land even though it is over­grown with bush­es and grass. “Peo­ple are grab­bing the land be­cause it has been aban­doned for so long.”

Mar­shall was al­so al­lo­cat­ed a two-acre plot in an­oth­er lo­ca­tion in Wa­ter­loo, which he said was rid­dled with is­sues.

He had hoped to cul­ti­vate the land to gen­er­ate an in­come. This nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. Mar­shall ad­mit­ted that he has to stretch his month­ly pen­sion “like elas­tic” to buy gro­ceries, pay his bills, and vis­it his doc­tor.

He said his pa­tience is run­ning thin. “All we have been get­ting is a set ah run around. When will the games stop?”

Rawl­in Ra­goonath, who laboured for 26 years with Ca­roni as a field of­fi­cer, said he has not been able to utilise his two acres in Re­form due to poor land con­di­tions, while he is still await­ing his res­i­den­tial lot at Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road.

“I see this de­lay as a crim­i­nal of­fence.”

He said the hold-up was “be­yond hurt­ful” to the for­mer work­ers who gave their blood, sweat, and tears to Ca­roni and were not ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sat­ed for their years of ser­vice.

“It’s dis­ap­point­ing that the peo­ple who we put to run the af­fairs of the coun­try are treat­ing the cit­i­zens like this. It just can­not be right. Just imag­ine that 21 years have passed, and you are still wait­ing for your land.”

Ra­goonath ad­mit­ted that the for­mer work­ers have been see­ing hell.

Siew Nages­sar called on the Gov­ern­ment to give the for­mer work­ers what is right­ful­ly due. He said it was “dis­taste­ful” to have the work­ers beg­ging for their lands.

“We feel de­ceived. I feel pol­i­tics is the main cause for lands not be­ing hand­ed out.”

Al­though Nages­sar has been cul­ti­vat­ing his two-acre plot in Ed­in­burgh, he said thieves have been raid­ing his farm. “I plant­i­ng and they reap­ing. That is a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence. I reach the stage where I am fed up.”

Ra­keeb Mo­hammed, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Sug­ar Boil­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, said from his cal­cu­la­tions more than 3,000 res­i­den­tial lots still have to be hand­ed out. Mo­hammed worked at Ca­roni for 23 years as a sug­ar boil­er.

Many of the sites, he said, were com­plet­ed for dis­tri­b­u­tion, but due to the EM­BD and the con­trac­tors’ on­go­ing le­gal bat­tle, every­thing was put on hold.

“There are 204 lots of res­i­den­tial lands in Ex­change Two in Cou­va to be giv­en out. But the de­lay is pay­ments … mon­ey. These work­ers did not ask to go home.”

He said some work­ers who re­ceived tick­ets for their lands don’t know where their agri­cul­tur­al plots are. Oth­ers have a lease, but they can’t ac­cess their land. Mo­hammed said at least 65 per cent of the work­ers who ac­cept­ed VSEP re­ceived less than $50,000.

“It was next to noth­ing they got.”

Plots sold

Land con­sul­tant and for­mer EM­BD di­rec­tor Stephen Ramkissoon told the Sun­day Guardian that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 per cent of Ca­roni work­ers passed away while wait­ing for their lands, and their ben­e­fi­cia­ries have been try­ing to find out their en­ti­tle­ments.

Ramkissoon al­so worked as a team leader at Ca­roni’s lands and le­gal de­part­ment for over two decades.

While the for­mer work­ers have been wait­ing pa­tient­ly for their lands, Ramkissoon said, large acreages were giv­en out to busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als to utilise.

In 2014, the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment agreed to trans­fer the lands, mean­ing a work­er could have sold their lot or plot. De­pend­ing on the lo­ca­tion, one lot of land could have fetched up­wards of $500,000, while a two-acre par­cel of agri­cul­ture land could have fetched more than $140,000.

Mo­hammed said sev­er­al work­ers sold their lands as they had noth­ing to fall back on af­ter be­ing sent home.

“The Gov­ern­ment is vi­o­lat­ing the law by fail­ing to give the ex-work­ers their lands. Most of these de­vel­op­ments are rack­et­ed with cor­rup­tion. It is full of cor­rup­tion and that is the rea­son why Ca­roni work­ers have to suf­fer to­day.”

Mo­hammed said this con­fu­sion with the lands has led to tur­moil and tears for many fam­i­lies.

“I know of work­ers whose mar­riages were shat­tered af­ter los­ing their jobs at Ca­roni. Some are squat­ting. Oth­ers are rent­ing the lit­tle they can af­ford. Quite a few are liv­ing on the streets be­cause they did not get the land they were promised. The politi­cians did the most heinous things to these for­mer work­ers. We were be­trayed by both the PNM and Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ments.”

The promised land

The two-acre agri­cul­tur­al plots and res­i­den­tial lots were promised to them by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the State’s sug­ar com­pa­ny in 2003.

A por­tion of Ca­roni’s 77, 000 acres was of­fered to 7,866 dai­ly paid work­ers and 1,154 month­ly paid em­ploy­ees as part of their vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion of em­ploy­ment (VSEP) pack­ages when the Cou­va-based com­pa­ny shut down its op­er­a­tions af­ter rack­ing up mount­ing debts and had huge op­er­a­tional costs.

More than two decades lat­er, scores of frus­trat­ed work­ers are yet to be al­lo­cat­ed their lands fol­low­ing three suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments.

Last No­vem­ber, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Avinash Singh dis­closed that 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.

Singh said the dis­tri­b­u­tion of leas­es falls un­der the am­bit of the fol­low­ing agen­cies: Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed which is re­spon­si­ble for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of all res­i­den­tial deeds, and the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD), which was charged with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of two-acre agri­cul­tur­al leas­es in sev­en agri­cul­tur­al es­tates, while the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands has been spear­head­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of two-acre agri­cul­tur­al leas­es in ten agri­cul­tur­al sites in Cen­tral and South.

The pro­longed de­lay in hand­ing over the lands by past and cur­rent gov­ern­ments has left thou­sands of for­mer work­ers in lim­bo.

Hun­dreds of these for­mer work­ers have gone to their graves with­out re­ceiv­ing what was owed to them. Oth­ers have been liv­ing on the streets, squat­ting and strug­gling to sur­vive, hav­ing fall­en on hard times.

Ac­cord­ing to the Draft Ex­pen­di­ture of Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture for Fis­cal 2024, the sum of $2,037,200 has been al­lo­cat­ed to Ca­roni (1975) for the set­tle­ment of claims for Ca­roni’s pen­sion plan.

In 2019, Ca­roni (1975) chair­man Jer­ry Hospedales re­vealed yes­ter­day that since the state-owned com­pa­ny closed down in 2003, the gov­ern­ment has spent $10 bil­lion “wrap­ping” it up.

Hospedales had said that a large chunk of this mon­ey was spent on pen­sions, train­ing cours­es, mon­e­tary ben­e­fits, and res­i­den­tial and agri­cul­tur­al lands for for­mer em­ploy­ees.

Le­gal chal­lenges de­lay de­liv­ery

A Pub­lic Ac­counts En­ter­pris­es Com­mit­tee (PAEC) re­port in­to the ex­am­i­na­tion of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd for the years 2010 to 2018 stat­ed that “the stalling of the de­vel­op­ment of the res­i­den­tial es­tates and the re­duc­tion in trans­ac­tion ac­tiv­i­ties re­lat­ing to those es­tates is due to the lit­i­ga­tion is­sues be­tween the EM­BD and sev­er­al con­trac­tors who were en­gaged in de­vel­op­ing 14 sites.”

It stat­ed that 17 agri­cul­tur­al es­tates were iden­ti­fied and de­vel­oped for de­liv­ery to 7,119 el­i­gi­ble ben­e­fi­cia­ries. Ca­roni was man­dat­ed to pro­vide 8,855 ben­e­fi­cia­ries with res­i­den­tial ser­vice lots.

The 108-page re­port fur­ther re­vealed that had Ca­roni 1975 Ltd con­tin­ued its op­er­a­tion to De­cem­ber 31, 2018, it would have in­curred an op­er­a­tional loss of $19.6 bil­lion.

In 2015, a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar car­tel case was brought by the EM­BD against a group of con­trac­tors, for­mer of­fi­cials, and for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

The sub­stan­tive law­suit cen­tres around 12 con­tracts for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and in­fra­struc­ture grant­ed to five con­trac­tors be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Con­trac­tors TN Ram­nauth, Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd and Kall Com­pa­ny Ltd (Kall­co) ini­ti­at­ed the pro­ceed­ings against the state-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny for the al­most $200 mil­lion bal­ance owed on their re­spec­tive con­tracts.

The EM­BD coun­ter­sued the con­trac­tors, claim­ing that they, as well as con­trac­tors Fides and Na­mal­co, con­spired to­geth­er with Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD CEO Gary Par­mas­sar, for­mer di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er Mad­hoo Bal­roop, and en­gi­neer An­drew Walk­er to cor­rupt­ly ob­tain the con­tracts.

It al­so claimed the par­ties agreed to fa­cil­i­tate the con­trac­tors re­ceiv­ing pre­lim­i­nary pay­ments for the work, which was al­leged­ly over­priced and sub­stan­dard.