The To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in a re­lease is call­ing on Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh to in­ves­ti­gate il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties now ev­i­dent in his min­istry's "pseu­do re­for­esta­tion pro­gramme in To­ba­go."

The coun­cil said it was the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment which end­ed the ser­vices of the com­mu­ni­ty groups which were con­tract­ed to man­age and im­ple­ment the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme in To­ba­go.

The re­lease said to date the min­istry had ig­nored all over­tures from sec­re­tary with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for forestry in To­ba­go Gary Melville who had re­quest­ed dis­cus­sion on the is­sue.

In­stead of en­gag­ing in di­a­logue, the min­istry went ahead and ap­point­ed its own con­trac­tors to man­age the pro­gramme, the re­lease added.

It said those con­trac­tors hired over 100 peo­ple who were now en­gaged in pro­vid­ing labour on four pri­vate prop­er­ties at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions through­out To­ba­go.

It is even more alarm­ing that one of those prop­er­ties be­longed to an as­sem­bly­man in its ses­sion and a TOP can­di­date in the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion.

The coun­cil re­mind­ed the min­is­ter that the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme was geared specif­i­cal­ly to the de­vel­op­ment of state lands in To­ba­go and it was un­ten­able state re­sources should be used to en­hance the prop­er­ties of pri­vate cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly those who have close links with the Gov­ern­ment.