Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is plan­ning to file a law­suit against the Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources. Chief Sec­re­tary of the THA Orville Lon­don made the state­ment dur­ing a THA me­dia con­fer­ence.

Lon­don said the as­sem­bly would ap­ply for an ad­min­is­tra­tive or­der re­quest­ing the court to de­cide whether the THA's rights were in­fringed when the ser­vices of 100 peo­ple from the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme (NR­WR) were ter­mi­nat­ed with ef­fect from Au­gust 17, 2012. Three com­mu­ni­ty-based groups pre­vi­ous­ly ran NR­WRP.

"In the first place we are chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion or the con­tin­u­ing de­ci­sion of the min­istry to in­ter­fere in the man­age­ment and or im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme in To­ba­go by ter­mi­nat­ing the ser­vices of com­mu­ni­ty groups which were con­tract­ed in Ar­gyle, Spey­side and Belle Gar­den and re­plac­ing them with their own of­fi­cials," Lon­don said.

The pro­gramme was es­tab­lished in 2003 with a man­date to in­crease the rate of for­est re­gen­er­a­tion with an aim to mit­i­gate the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment. Tra­di­tion­al­ly the NR­WRP worked through com­mu­ni­ty groups to meet the needs to re­pair, pre­serve and pro­tect the na­tion's forests, wa­ter­sheds, wet­lands, flo­ra and fau­na.

Lon­don said un­der the Fifth Sched­ule of the THA Act No 40 of 1996 the as­sem­bly was re­spon­si­ble for state lands, forestry and the en­vi­ron­ment and there­fore felt there was a need to en­force its au­thor­i­ty and not al­low unau­tho­rised per­sons to car­ry out any ac­tiv­i­ty in the for­est.

He al­so not­ed that the as­sem­bly would be seek­ing re­dress in the courts be­cause of the min­istry's re­jec­tion of the THA's pro­pos­al for fund­ing from the Green Fund.

He added: "Sec­ond­ly in a re­lat­ed is­sue we are chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion where the Green Fund Ex­e­cu­tion Unit of the Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources for fund­ing from the Green Fund, where they were claim­ing that they could not treat with the as­sem­bly's re­quest be­cause in their opin­ion the as­sem­bly's re­quest was not in sync with the Na­tion­al pro­gramme in re­la­tion to re­for­esta­tion when in fact it is the THA which is re­spon­si­ble for set­ting up and im­ple­ment­ing its own pro­gramme in To­ba­go.

Lon­don said he hoped the is­sue could be re­solved in the com­ing weeks.