A trade union's ac­cu­sa­tion stirred lit­tle no­tice amid the furore fol­low­ing the procla­ma­tion and sub­se­quent re­peal of Clause 34, but for the thou­sands of for­mer cane farm­ers left in lim­bo af­ter the clo­sure of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd, it was one more hur­dle in their decade-long jour­ney to self-suf­fi­cien­cy.

On Tues­day, Nir­van Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union ac­cused the com­pa­ny of dis­band­ing, "with­out due care and process," 21 mem­bers of staff work­ing on the Ten­an­cy Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion Project. The work­ers, Mr Ma­haraj, claimed, were re­trenched with no re­gard to ex­ist­ing laws gov­ern­ing such sev­er­ance and, even more dis­turbing­ly, that the com­pa­ny held no dis­cus­sions or con­sul­ta­tions about the ef­fec­tive clo­sure of the project with the work­ers, union or farm­ers who will be di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the abrupt end of the project.

No one in gov­ern­ment seemed able to ad­dress the is­sue sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly. Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj seemed to sug­gest that a $400 mil­lion pay­ment by the Eu­ro­pean Union, giv­en to un­der­write the land ten­an­cy project that was a key el­e­ment of the ne­go­ti­a­tions with farm­ers when the de­ci­sion was made to close Ca­roni, was spent and no oth­er mon­ey was avail­able.

The project was to pro­ceed in three phas­es and on­ly one, the de­mar­ca­tion of lands via GPS, has been done, leav­ing sur­vey­ing and the trans­fer of lands still to be done. In April 2011, a bold plan to ad­dress lo­cal food pro­duc­tion was ar­tic­u­lat­ed by for­mer Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath who hoped to bun­dle a num­ber of the small parcels of land giv­en to farm­ers in­to larg­er, more ef­fi­cient farms but stum­bled on the an­noy­ance of the farm­ers who were frus­trat­ed by de­lays in the le­gal ti­tle to their land al­lot­ments and in­fra­struc­ture sup­port that was promised to them.

In Jan­u­ary 2012, Mr Bharath an­nounced that $77 mil­lion had been spent on re­pair­ing 4,000 res­i­den­tial plots and ex­pect­ed to put 15,000 acres of land "un­der the con­trol of ex-Ca­roni work­ers." Since then more land has been hand­ed over to farm­ers, but it's an ac­tiv­i­ty that's proven to be more drib­ble than stream. Too many are still await­ing for­mal assig­na­tion of the lands iden­ti­fied for them. The crip­pling lack of ac­cess roads and drainage sys­tems has al­so led to un­der­util­i­sa­tion of even those lands now in the hands of farm­ers.

At the cen­tre of the is­sues fac­ing the for­mer cane work­ers is an un­jus­ti­fi­able and on­go­ing lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a large con­stituen­cy of peo­ple who trust­ed the Gov­ern­ment in 2003 to be fair and just, and yes, prompt when they closed the sug­ar in­dus­try down in Trinidad and To­ba­go. These were the cane farm­ers who stared down the lack of prof­its at Ca­roni and through a re­mark­able ded­i­ca­tion to agri­cul­ture re­mained in that busi­ness un­til the bit­ter end.

The farm­ers who sought lands to farm and have re­mained dogged­ly com­mit­ted to the idea of turn­ing fal­low fields in­to pro­duc­tive acreages are sure­ly the most tena­cious agri­cul­tur­ists this coun­try has had the good for­tune to have nur­tured. These farm­ers, who have been large­ly ig­nored if not for­got­ten over the last nine years, re­main com­mit­ted to turn­ing for­mer Ca­roni lands to pro­duc­tive use and they de­serve straight an­swers from the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment who was said to be re­spon­si­ble for the al­lo­ca­tion of their lands and the Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, who should be more in­volved in their plight.

It's sur­pris­ing and a lit­tle shock­ing to re­alise that thou­sands of po­ten­tial farm­ers are be­ing frus­trat­ed by still un­ex­plained bu­reau­cra­cy while the Gov­ern­ment seeks to re­as­sure the pub­lic that it's se­ri­ous about food sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The for­mer cane farm­ers of Ca­roni have good rea­son to ques­tion that com­mit­ment to agri­cul­ture, and their con­cerns de­mand clear­er an­swers and brisker ac­tion.