SHARLENE RAMPERSAD
Opposition Senator Wade Mark has accused Youth Development Ministry of using the recently launched Youth Agricultural Homestead Programme (YAHP) to legitimise land grabbing and voter padding.
Mark made the allegations during a United National Congress (UNC) media conference at the Office of the Opposition Leader in Port-of-Spain.
He said the programme, which grants two-acre parcels of land, starter homes and $8,000 in tuition paid by the State, was shrouded in secrecy.
The programme is being led by the Youth Development Ministry, which Foster Cummings leads and is being done in conjunction with the Ministry of Housing, through the Land Settlement Agency. Only those between the ages of 18 to 35 were eligible to apply.
Mark said the Opposition fully supports a policy of giving lands to the landless but said the YAHP programme needed to be fully transparent and equal.
“What we strenuously object to is the apparent use of underhand methods and tactics to allocate and distribute the people’s lands. You cannot distribute or allocate for distribution, the people’s lands without proper accountability without proper transparency,” he said.
Mark said the programme, which is utilising lands in Fyzabad, Chatham, Kendall in Palo Seco and La Gloria in New Grant in the first phase, is being used to voter pad. He also questioned how the 200 successful applicants were selected from the 1,500 people who applied.
“The public was never properly informed of this initiative, it was similar to the PNM scholarship slush fund. Only the PNM supporters knew about this slush fund and applied. The same appears to be happening with the Youth Agricultural Homestead Programme. It appears that only members and supporters of the People’s National Movement will be able to access this programme,” Mark said.
He said by making certificates of character a requirement for applicants, the Government excluded many youngsters who may have had run-ins with the law.
“The reality is that we have a mafia-type administration in place which appears to be literally institutionalising land grabbing in Trinidad and Tobago, leaving out young people who can properly access lands and based on what we have seen before us, which I will demonstrate in a short while, only the financiers of the PM seem to be lined up for all lands in this country,” Mark said.
He said the Government was distributing 400 acres of the people’s land without any sense of good governance principles and value, with no transparency or accountability and no publicity of the criteria for the programme.
Guardian Media contacted Minister Cummings asking for a response to Mark’s allegations.
Cummings said the Government would continue to introduce “opportunities for the development” of the country’s young people.
“YAHP is one such initiative which will produce for our country a new cadre of 21st-century farmers. It has been embraced by the young people of T&T and will certainly add to our food security,” Cummings said.
He said the “ramblings” of the Opposition will not distract the Government from its job.
Cummings faced his own allegations of land grabbing when a Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) Special Branch report into his business activities was leaked in the last several weeks. The document contained allegations that Cummings had “taken control” of lands belonging to the Housing Development Corporation. Cummings has since denied the allegations and threatened to sue Opposition Senator Jayanti Lutchmedial, who publicised the leaked report during a political meeting.