Brent Zephyrine

Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Vas­ant Bharath has said his res­ig­na­tion over the farm­ers' dis­pute is the Prime Min­is­ter's call. Bharath said he had not been, nor did he ex­pect to be rep­ri­mand­ed for the po­si­tion he took to sup­port ag­griev­ed farm­ers. He said Op­po­si­tion calls for his res­ig­na­tion over the is­sue, was clear­ly a de­ci­sion which rest­ed in the hands of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"That (my res­ig­na­tion) is the pre­rog­a­tive of the Prime Min­is­ter and I do not think Mr Hinds has reached there yet," he said. Bharath was speak­ing with re­porters yes­ter­day at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of a pub­lic lec­ture and ac­tiv­i­ty week, host­ed by the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (CAR­DI).

It was held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, and had as its fea­ture speak­er, the in­ter­im di­rec­tor, School of Agri­cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus), Dr Chel­ston Brath­waite.

At a press con­fer­ence last Mon­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds said Bharath had breached the am­bits of "col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty" when both he and Min­is­ter of Hous­ing Dr Roodal Mooni­lal (both Cab­i­net mem­bers) ap­peared to be in dis­agree­ment with each oth­er on the is­sue of land al­lo­ca­tion. Ch­agua­nas and D'Abadie farm­ers have been irate since East­er Mon­day when acres of their crops were bull­dozed by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to make way for the con­struc­tion of hous­es.

When asked if he (Bharath) was rep­ri­mand­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar last week for be­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the farm­ers over their land is­sue, Bharath said such had not yet oc­curred and he did not an­tic­i­pate such ac­tion.

"No I haven't... my job is to pro­duce more food so I re­al­ly don't ex­pect to be." Bharath said he was op­ti­mistic about meet­ing farm­ers to­day and was "hope­ful it will be to the ben­e­fit of all con­cerned" since the meet­ing was geared to­wards "set­tling the prob­lem." He added: "Clear­ly we can­not al­low the is­sue to con­tin­ue in its cur­rent state so we have got to try to make sure we sit down around a ta­ble and talk about it."

He said while the Gov­ern­ment's cur­rent of­fer to farm­ers was that they be com­pen­sat­ed for their crops and be of­fered the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­lo­cate, he had not yet had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with Mooni­lal. He added: "Dr Mooni­lal and I have not sat down and had any fur­ther dis­cus­sions since last Thurs­day and I think you all know what is on the ta­ble as far as the Gov­ern­ment is con­cerned. "I will ob­vi­ous­ly need to speak with him be­fore we meet with the farm­ers to­mor­row to see if there is any change in our po­si­tion. "What we are all say­ing col­lec­tive­ly is that we must have de­vel­op­men­tal goals of hous­ing to­geth­er and bal­anced with food pro­duc­tion. It is not a ques­tion of com­pet­ing in­ter­ests, it is sim­ply that we must man­age both.

"One of the poli­cies we have talked about that will al­low us to see this mat­ter through very clear­ly is a land de­vel­op­ment plan, how we plan the de­vel­op­ment ar­eas in T&T for hous­ing and for agri­cul­ture," he added. He said he al­ready had dis­cussed the land use pol­i­cy with se­nior staff with­in his min­istry and was hop­ing to "short­cut a few cir­cuits" so that he "could bring a note to Cab­i­net, maybe with­in two to three weeks."