Gov­ern­ment has shut down Ca­roni (1975) Ltd's ten­an­cy reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion project, putting 21 work­ers on the bread­line. The project, es­tab­lished in 2009 to pro­vide le­gal land en­ti­tle­ment to over 4,500 cane farm­ers, was dis­band­ed two days be­fore In­de­pen­dence Day, pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the All Trinidad Gen­er­al Work­ers' Trade Union, Nir­van Ma­haraj, said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence held at Rien­zi Com­plex in Cou­va yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj claimed the project was dis­band­ed with­out care or due process. "Ca­roni ob­scene­ly vi­o­lat­ed the pro­vi­sions of the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act 1985 Sec­tion 6 which states that 45 days' no­tice must be giv­en be­fore re­trench­ment," Ma­haraj de­clared. He added that there were no dis­cus­sions, no con­sul­ta­tions and no of­fers of al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment.

Ma­haraj warned that cane farm­ers would face a bleak fu­ture if the project was not restart­ed. "The neg­a­tive con­se­quence of this ac­tion will af­fect over 4,500 cane farm­ers who were de­pen­dent on this project to get se­cu­ri­ty of tenure and the com­fort of know­ing that they were now reg­u­larised on the lands they oc­cu­pied for so long," Ma­haraj said.

Based on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, Ma­haraj claimed a note was tak­en by Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj to Cab­i­net re­quest­ing fund­ing for phase two of the project. How­ev­er, he said no monies were forth­com­ing and this was why the project was dis­band­ed. He ex­plained that the Eu­ro­pean Union fi­nanced the Land Ten­an­cy Project by grant­i­ng a $400 mil­lion tranche af­ter Ca­roni's clo­sure in 2003.

"Some­one in au­thor­i­ty needs to tell us where the Eu­ro­pean Union mon­ey gone? It was giv­en to the gov­ern­ment for the sin­gu­lar pur­pose of deal­ing with is­sues re­lat­ing to cane farm­ers," Ma­haraj said. "Gov­ern­ment must re­alise that the peo­ple from the plan­ta­tion fields whose backs pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion up­on which they stand are wait­ing for an­swers."

Ca­roni's ten­an­cy reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion project was sup­posed to be done in three phas­es. The first phase in­volved do­ing GPS de­mar­ca­tions on the bound­aries of lands oc­cu­pied by farm­ers for gen­er­a­tions. The sec­ond phase in­volved sur­vey­ing, and the third phase in­volved pro­vi­sion of le­gal land en­ti­tle­ment.

Ma­haraj called on oth­er cane-farm­ing groups to part­ner with AT­GW­TU to en­sure all farm­ers re­ceived land reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion. He said meet­ings have been sched­uled with Ca­roni's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer De­osaran Ja­groo to dis­cuss the is­sue. Food Pro­duc­tion De­vant Ma­haraj de­nied knowl­edge of the project yes­ter­day.

He said, "I am not aware of this. I don't know that this project was dis­band­ed. I didn't give au­tho­ri­sa­tion to dis­band it. Land does not fall un­der my min­istry. You have to check Min­is­ter Mooni­lal." How­ev­er, Mooni­lal did not re­spond to phone calls and text mes­sages.