Ali­cia Llanos

A to­tal of 3,000 acres of land will be made avail­able to the pub­lic for agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment. The lands are spread across cen­tral Trinidad in Ca­roni and Or­ange Grove. Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Re­sources Vas­ant Bharath made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day short­ly af­ter he plant­ed three paw paw trees on south Mal­oney farm­lands in ob­ser­vance of yes­ter­day's Cor­pus Christi cel­e­bra­tions. The min­is­ter said those lands would be avail­able to the pub­lic in two months. Bharath said the min­istry had toured the coun­try and iden­ti­fied 3,000 acres of read­i­ly avail­able land.

He said the lands iden­ti­fied were those owned by the now de­funct Ca­roni 1975 Ltd. Bharath said the lands would be ad­ver­tised and made avail­able to the pub­lic for agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment be­fore the 2011/ 2012 na­tion­al bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in Sep­tem­ber. Pressed as to whether these lands would be al­lo­cat­ed to farm­ers dis­placed in Egypt Trace, Ch­agua­nas, Bharath said lands had been iden­ti­fied for those farm­ers at Soogrim Trace, Ch­agua­nas, which he added, "was just a stone's throw away" from their orig­i­nal plots.

Bharath said the min­istry was cur­rent­ly putting in drainage sys­tems and ac­cess roads on the land.

He said farm­ers would be able to start plant­i­ng with­in the next two weeks.

Dis­cussing the flood­ing erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cise be­ing car­ried by his min­istry, in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Bharath said an ad­di­tion­al $60 mil­lion had be al­lo­cat­ed to­wards the project. Bharath said the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment had al­lo­cat­ed a fur­ther $60 mil­lion to con­tin­ue the ex­er­cise of clear­ing drains and ma­jor wa­ter­ways. He said due to the lack of a dry sea­son the ex­er­cise had tak­en longer than ex­pect­ed. He was con­fi­dent all work would be com­plet­ed in the com­ing months. Bharath added: "We can­not con­trol the weath­er but we can con­trol and mit­i­gate the ef­fects it will have.".