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Monday, July 14, 2025

Ex-Caroni cane farmer wins $.3m from State

by

Rishard Khan
2400 days ago
20181218
Senator and attorney Gerald Ramdeen, left, with Dipchand Lal, second from left, Bhoe Tewarie, right, and other farmers at Ramdeen’s Office in Woodbrook yesterday.

Senator and attorney Gerald Ramdeen, left, with Dipchand Lal, second from left, Bhoe Tewarie, right, and other farmers at Ramdeen’s Office in Woodbrook yesterday.

RISHARD KHAN

For­mer pri­vate sug­ar cane farm­ers are ap­peal­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is to let good sense pre­vail and pay them what they are owed.

The call was made dur­ing a press con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day af­ter one farmer's suc­cess in the High Court.

For­mer pri­vate cane farmer Dipc­hand Lal re­ceived a cheque for over $300,000, af­ter he chal­lenged the state for his por­tion of mon­ey which they were owed fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd in 2007.

Lal and over 2,000 for­mer cane farm­ers have chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment over its fail­ure to pay them an out­stand­ing $103 mil­lion, which is the bal­ance from an ini­tial $130 mil­lion which the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) and the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment had made avail­able to the farm­ers to help them tran­si­tion from the sug­ar in­dus­try.

Lal, 65, re­it­er­at­ed that fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the in­dus­try in 2007 they were of­fered tran­si­tion­al sup­port for their loss of earn­ings for two and a half years.

“We've had a long bat­tle with the gov­ern­ment for out­stand­ing monies that the Eu­ro­pean Union of­fered to take the farm­ers from where they were at that time to where they would like to be in the fu­ture,” he said.

In 2012, the for­mer farm­ers be­gan con­ver­sa­tions with the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment through Dr Bhoe Tewarie, who was the min­is­ter of plan­ning. In 2014, the farm­ers ac­cept­ed that $130 mil­lion would be paid to some 3,000 pri­vate farm­ers from the gov­ern­ment in three parts and the first was in­stal­ment paid by the PP.

Lal said the present Gov­ern­ment kept deny­ing there was ever any mon­ey for them to col­lect. How­ev­er, af­ter both his lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen and Tewarie "ap­plied pres­sure" on their be­half, Gov­ern­ment ad­mit­ted there was on­ly $57 mil­lion they could re­ceive.

“We did not ac­cept…our fore­fa­thers and our self, we work and we work and we toil and that mon­ey (the $130 mil­lion) was due to us,” Lal said.

“I would use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to­day to ask the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net of this coun­try to al­low good sense to pre­vail and pay the farm­ers' mon­ey out­stand­ing to them.”

He added, “I am sad to­day be­cause this cheque that I am get­ting is on be­half of my­self and the rest of farm­ers don't have their cheque and when they get their cheque, then I'd be hap­py.”

Tewarie said Cab­i­net's uni­lat­er­al change of the ne­go­ti­at­ed agree­ment be­tween the then gov­ern­ment and the farm­ers un­der­mined the process of ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ments and con­ti­nu­ity of gov­ern­ment.

He said ru­ined the cred­i­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ment and would re­sult in few­er in­vest­ments be­ing made in the coun­try due to con­cerns from in­vestors over whether agree­ments with Gov­ern­ment would be ho­n­oured.

Ramdeen said he hopes this win sets a prece­dent for fur­ther pro­ceed­ings of a sim­i­lar na­ture.

“Every mat­ter that has been filed thus far, the Gov­ern­ment has lost,” Ramdeen said.


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