Richard?Lord

Cane farm­ers have giv­en the Gov­ern­ment a sev­en-day ul­ti­ma­tum to say when they will be paid the out­stand­ing $57 mil­lion owed fol­low­ing an agree­ment with the Eu­ro­pean Union.

At­tor­ney for the cane farm­ers, Ger­ald Ramdeen, is­sued the ul­ti­ma­tum in a let­ter yes­ter­day to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Cab­i­net in March agreed to dis­trib­ute the mon­ey as fi­nal pay­ment to the cane farm­ers from the agree­ment be­tween Gov­ern­ment and the EU fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd. Ramdeen said by let­ter to the min­istry dat­ed March 8, the cane farm­ers agreed to ac­cept the mon­ey "with­out prej­u­dice to their right to chal­lenge the de­ci­sion and or fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment to pay the re­main­ing $45 mil­lion as promised by the pre­vi­ous (Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship) ad­min­is­tra­tion."

Ramdeen said the Gov­ern­ment had not as yet re­spond­ed to the cane farm­ers' let­ter and they have not re­ceived any mon­ey. In his let­ter to the Prime Min­is­ter, he said, if the PNM Gov­ern­ment re­fused to pay the cane farm­ers be­cause of their stat­ed in­ten­tion to ini­ti­ate le­gal ac­tion to get the rest of the mon­ey, it would amount to se­ri­ous abuse of state pow­er.

Ramdeen said the Gov­ern­ment, via a let­ter from the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, dat­ed Au­gust 29, re­quest­ed a 30-day ex­ten­sion to re­spond to the pro­pos­al sub­mit­ted by the cane farm­ers.

He said that the 2016/2017 Na­tion­al Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment on Sep­tem­ber 30 and the cane farm­ers were "not pre­pared" to wait un­til then to know whether they will be paid.

"The cane farm­ers are no longer pre­pared to await the plea­sure of your ad­min­is­tra­tion to re­ceive their pay­ment," the let­ter stat­ed. He said they were not pre­pared to have "funds be­ing held in trust for them be placed in­to the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund." Ramdeen said if Row­ley failed to meet the sev­en-day dead­line "the cane farm­ers will em­bark up­on a cam­paign through the courts and by pub­lic demon­stra­tion to com­pel the Gov­ern­ment to ho­n­our their promise."