Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing a $1 bil­lion de­vel­op­ment in­vest­ment from the pri­vate sec­tor to fund its Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme over the next four years, Land and Ma­rine Re­sources Min­is­ter Jairam Seemu­n­gal said yes­ter­day.Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing Seemu­n­gal said Cab­i­net had ap­proved a new pol­i­cy in that re­gard for the pro­gramme which was launched in 2012.He said the pro­gramme now had the re­quire­ments to is­sue lots since it took some time to get the nec­es­sary ap­provals from util­i­ty com­pa­nies be­fore a lot could be made avail­able.

He said there were 60,000 ap­pli­cants and 23,000 from the Squat­ter Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme.Leas­es are be­ing is­sued all over T&T from North to South. On March 25, 500 leas­es will be is­sued for the pro­gramme and 500 more al­so for peo­ple un­der the Squat­ter Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme.Seemu­n­gal said Cab­i­net agreed that the in­fra­struc­ture, de­vel­op­ment and de­sign of fu­ture sites of Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme would be fi­nanced by a pub­lic sec­tor/pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ship mech­a­nism. Gov­ern­ment will not be fund­ing the plan.

How it will work

Deny­ing it was an elec­tion ploy, he said the ini­tia­tive was nec­es­sary due to Gov­ern­ment belt-tight­en­ing fol­low­ing the re­cent drop in oil prices and the mech­a­nism in­volved would al­low those with cash in the bank to in­vest at an at­trac­tive rate of re­turn.Seemu­n­gal said the mech­a­nism for de­vel­op­ment would come un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Lands Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) and suc­cess­ful pri­vate com­pa­nies who put in bids to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gramme would be eval­u­at­ed by an eval­u­a­tion team.

Pri­vate com­pa­nies will be of­fered an at­trac­tive rate of in­ter­est as in­cen­tive to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gramme. Suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies will have to han­dle all de­vel­op­ment needs, in­clud­ing roads, util­i­ty lines, etc. The LSA will han­dle pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es.He said any com­pa­ny cho­sen would do 100 per cent of the nec­es­sary work to de­vel­op the sites to­wards full com­ple­tion over a four-year pe­ri­od. He said the plan calls for de­vel­op­ing 3,000 to 4,000 lots a year.

The Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands will set prices at which the de­vel­oped lands will be sold.The min­is­ter said all ap­pli­ca­tions would be scru­ti­nised by checks with all au­thor­i­ties to en­sure they did not al­ready own prop­er­ty.The deed will al­so in­clude claus­es de­bar­ring the home­own­er from sell­ing the land and it will on­ly be passed to any rel­a­tive, via a will made by the own­er. He said the land would re­main State land and un­der LSA con­trol.

Govt moves on land grab­bers

Seemu­n­gal said he had brought in the Fraud Squad to move on "land grab­bers." He not­ed 600 build­ings had to be re­moved from the Matu­ra for­est re­serve on which they had been built and bull­dozed, de­stroy­ing for­est cov­er.Lands be­ing used in the Land for the Land­less Pro­gramme will be green­field in parcels of 30 to 40 acres which will have roads, box drains, sew­er sys­tems and space for schools and shop­ping fa­cil­i­ties as a ful­ly fledged vil­lage. Lo­ca­tions will de­pend on how far wa­ter lines and oth­er util­i­ty re­quire­ments will have to be run.

On the po­ten­tial for cor­rup­tion, Seemu­n­gal said one ought not to paint all pub­lic ser­vants with the "cor­rup­tion brush."He said the project, in which bids will be re­quired from the par­tic­i­pat­ing pri­vate com­pa­nies, will be sub­ject to the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion and all con­trac­tors would have to bid equal­ly to ac­cess it. He said the LSA had a very com­pe­tent team and he was con­fi­dent it had the mech­a­nisms to han­dle it. A team of pro­fes­sion­al plan­ners will al­so be work­ing on the project.

Seemu­n­gal said Cab­i­net al­so agreed to ex­pand the cri­te­ria for peo­ple ap­ply­ing for res­i­den­tial lots in the Land for the Land­less, ex­pand­ing it from the con­di­tions that ap­pli­cants earn a house­hold in­come be­tween $8,000 to $10,000 month­ly to $30,000 in­stead.He said that would al­low for mid­dle class ap­pli­cants and young en­tre­pre­neurs who have re­quest­ed ac­cess to the pro­gramme. Lots will al­so be sub­sidised by Gov­ern­ment from a range of 80 per cent (for those cost­ing $250,000 to $300,000) to 30 per cent (over $350,000).

Seemu­n­gal said that was to en­sure Gov­ern­ment re­cov­ered the full cost of con­trac­tors' de­vel­op­ment. Ap­pli­cants can qual­i­fy for fund­ing through the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny and can al­so use the two per cent mort­gage rate for the pro­gramme.

TML is­sue

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh says while there have been some re­ports of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme, it was be­ing mon­i­tored and has man­age­ment in place to deal with such is­sues.He said there were al­ways a few cas­es of ab­nor­mal­i­ties but those were dealt with. A few times, he said, he called the of­fi­cials of the pro­gramme to tell them to im­prove qual­i­ty and they took ac­tion.

On the re­cent TML is­sue con­cern­ing a teacher, Gopeesingh de­tailed how the min­istry was sim­ply a con­duit since the TML was a de­nom­i­na­tion­al school and the mat­ter was be­tween the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and TML.He said Cab­i­net had ap­proved 300 teach­ers for Ear­ly Child­hood Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tres and 400 teacher as­sis­tants for the same schools.