Shas­tri Boodan

Farm­ers op­er­at­ing on 100 acres of land at Pe­ters­field, Ch­agua­nas, are de­mand­ing com­pen­sa­tion from the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA).

Dur­ing a protest out­side the site on Wednes­day, spokesman for the farm­ers Har­i­nath Ra­moutar claimed the prime agri­cul­tur­al land was bull­dozed to de­vel­op hous­ing lots for for­mer Petrotrin em­ploy­ees and/or hous­ing for peo­ple from east Port-of-Spain the Gov­ern­ment planned to re­lo­cate in or­der to un­der­take re­de­vel­op­ment in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal.

“We eh have no prob­lem with that, every­body from Trinidad, but give us our due,” he said.

Ra­moutar said the farm­ers want some lev­el of di­a­logue with the LSA.

He said, “LSA has seen fit to come here and de­mol­ish our crops, grade the land and pre­pare the land for hous­ing.”

De­spite the protest, Ra­moutar said his group had a cor­dial meet­ing with LSA of­fi­cials, who promised to re­solve the mat­ter in an am­i­ca­ble man­ner. He said the farm­ers were al­so ad­vised to pen a let­ter to the LSA CEO.

He said some of the 45 af­fect­ed farm­ers had got­ten loans from the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank and are now un­able to pay.

Mean­while, in a state­ment, the Min­istry of Hous­ing said the LSA had be­gun in­fra­struc­tur­al works at Wood­ford Lodge, Ch­agua­nas Main Road, Ch­agua­nas, for the de­vel­op­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 630 res­i­den­tial lots to be al­lo­cat­ed to for­mer Petrotrin em­ploy­ees.

It said a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion was held in Feb­ru­ary to ap­prise the com­mu­ni­ty of the project and ad­dress any con­cerns by mem­bers of the pub­lic.

The min­istry said over the pe­ri­od Feb­ru­ary to March 2023, how­ev­er, an in­crease in farm­ing ac­tiv­i­ties by agri­cul­tur­al squat­ters was no­ticed, in­clud­ing struc­tures on the site ear­marked for de­vel­op­ment works.

It said as part of its project scope, the LSA fa­cil­i­tat­ed sev­er­al site vis­its to as­sess the works be­ing un­der­tak­en.

The min­istry said works will al­so in­clude wa­ter retic­u­la­tion and sew­er­age net­works. The site will al­so in­clude spaces for com­mer­cial, recre­ation­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al use.