Shal­iza Has­sanali

For years the lands, which be­long to Ca­roni 1975 Ltd, were cov­ered in tow­er­ing grass which en­cour­aged drug ad­dicts and crim­i­nals in the com­mu­ni­ty."We start­ed util­is­ing the lands to dis­cour­age the un­de­sir­ables," said Sankar.Sankar said the ac­tion of the Gov­ern­ment was in to­tal con­tra­dic­tion to what was out­lined in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship man­i­festo, which stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment would have re­spect for agri­cul­ture, farm­ers and the land.The man­i­festo, Sankar said, clear­ly out­lined that the Gov­ern­ment will ef­fect a na­tion­al land use pol­i­cy that spec­i­fies and­pro­tects land to be used ex­clu­sive­ly for agri­cul­ture and reg­u­larise "squat­ter farm lands" on the ba­sis of co-oop­er­a­tive ef­forts.

NFC­FA mem­ber Shi­raz Mo­hammed said rather than em­brace farm­ers who make a valid con­tri­bu­tion to food se­cu­ri­ty, the gov­ern­ment was chas­ing them.Mo­hammed said while he recog­nised the need for hous­ing, the Gov­ern­ment was go­ing about it the wrong way:"All par­ties have to sit to­geth­er and work things out."Con­tact­ed on Fri­day, di­rec­tor of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Yolande Agard-Sim­mons di­rect­ed all ques­tions con­cern­ing the farm­ers' plight to the Min­istry of Hous­ing.