Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Ac­tivists of the High­way Re-route Move­ment have start­ed plant­i­ng trees on land des­ig­nat­ed for Gov­ern­ment's $7.2 bil­lion high­way. The ac­tivists said they would seek in­ter­na­tion­al aid for their fight against the State. They want an al­ter­na­tive route for the Debe to Mon De­sir High­way and the re­lo­ca­tion of Carisal, a chem­i­cal com­plex. Led by Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, the ac­tivists plant­ed ba­nana trees, co­conuts, pineap­ples, sug­ar ap­ples and cas­sa­va trees on the land, which was ploughed short­ly af­ter dawn. As she plant­ed a co­conut tree, res­i­dent Ameena Mo­hammed said: "This is our land. We tak­ing it back. We don't need per­mis­sion from any­body."

Ham­let Har­riper­sad said the Gov­ern­ment was plan­ning to bull­doze peo­ple's hous­es and dis­rupt their liveli­hood. "We are all cit­i­zens and we are say­ing there are oth­er routes this high­way can take. We want to hear from our Prime Min­is­ter," Har­riper­sad said. He warned if con­trac­tors tried to get past their camp, there would be vi­o­lence. How­ev­er, Kublals­ingh said his team would fight a peace­ful and le­gal bat­tle. He said the High­way Re-route Move­ment would lob­by in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal bod­ies to so­lic­it sup­port. "The Gov­ern­ment plans to take away 1,000 acres of agri­cul­tur­al land and de­stroy 300 homes and cre­ate per­ma­nent flood­ing by build­ing an em­bank­ment 5.1 miles long and eight feet high. The peo­ple built up their so­cial, com­mu­ni­ty life here so they must take back the lands," Kublals­ingh said. He said peo­ple have a du­ty to cor­rect the Gov­ern­ment if it com­mits an atroc­i­ty that would bring dis­tress to cit­i­zens.

Kublals­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment had no right to dis­em­pow­er or dis­pos­sess cit­i­zens. Re­fer­ring to Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, he said: "Jack is us­ing $4 bil­lion of State funds to fund the Mon De­sir to Debe route. If he wants to put his own per­son­al funds and build the high­way, then fine, but he is us­ing the State funds to dis­rupt peo­ple's lives and we must stop him." Asked to re­spond to Warn­er's claim that he had a po­lit­i­cal agen­da, Kublals­ingh said while he had great re­spect for Warn­er, he would not en­cour­age Warn­er to abuse the funds."We will en­gage any prin­ci­pled politi­cian, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, mem­bers of MSJ, Mr Ra­mad­har and COP. We are fight­ing a bat­tle and we will en­gage in­ter­na­tion­al forces," Kublals­ingh added. He said a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter was be­ing pre­pared and ac­tion would be filed against the State to stop the Mon De­sir leg of the high­way. Kublals­ingh not­ed that T&T was part of the Ram­sar Con­ven­tion which pro­tect­ed the Nar­i­va and Ca­roni swamps. How­ev­er, he said he would lob­by in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies to al­so pro­tect the Oropouche swamp.