RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

At the time of its clo­sure in Ju­ly 2003, Ca­roni’s (1975) Lim­it­ed was T&T’s largest landown­er, con­trol­ling 76,608 acres (31,000 hectares) of land, ac­cord­ing to in­ter­nal records. The com­pa­ny’s mass land­hold­ings were nev­er prop­er­ly sur­veyed but da­ta ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia from an in­sid­er shows that it owned 25 per cent of the best avail­able arable lands in the coun­try.

Its 54,951 acres of agri­cul­tur­al lands in­clud­ed 10,963 acres on which there were fac­to­ries and oth­er build­ings and 10,695 acres for res­i­den­tial ten­ants and leas­es.

Since then, Ca­roni’s as­sets have dwin­dled to the ex­tent that on­ly about 18,464 acres are left. In the years since the clo­sure of the state-owned sug­ar com­pa­ny, land grab­bers have oc­cu­pied some acreages.

Al­so, more than 5,218 acres were al­lo­cat­ed for failed mega-farms projects and ETeck parks; while gov­ern­ment fi­nanciers have been giv­en ac­cess to some of the land agri­cul­tur­al schemes which pro­vid­ed lit­tle or noth­ing to the pub­lic purse.

Wealthy con­trac­tors have set up lu­cra­tive busi­ness­es on Ca­roni’s lands.

Peo­ple liv­ing next to va­cant Ca­roni lands claimed parcels of it. They would be­gin plant­i­ng co­conut trees around the stolen lands, then start cul­ti­vat­ing crops and fruit trees. Over time fences and struc­tures were erect­ed, busi­ness­es es­tab­lished and even sold or leased.

A one mile stretch from Welling­ton Road Junc­tion at Pic­ton to Welling­ton Gar­dens in Debe has been claimed by squat­ters, some of whom now have built con­crete struc­tures.

Shacks and or­chards have sprout­ed up on state-owned fields in Gol­con­da were re­al es­tate val­ues have sky­rock­et­ed since the con­struc­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) South cam­pus on the M2-Ring Road, Debe.

Oblique­ly op­po­site the cam­pus, a Siparia busi­ness­man has claimed a piece of land and built a shack there.

At Fac­to­ry Road and Con­nec­tor Road, Ch­agua­nas, land grab­bers have snatched hun­dreds of acres. So too in Gol­con­da, Clax­ton Bay, Cou­va, St He­le­na and Pe­nal.

Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have giv­en away vast acreages to friends, rel­a­tives and fi­nanciers un­der var­i­ous pro­grammes aimed at le­git­imis­ing se­cret land deals.

This start­ed short­ly af­ter Ca­roni closed in 2003. Even af­ter the lands were placed un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture in 2006, the ram­pant grab­bing and give­aways con­tin­ued

Gov­ern­ments’ roles in land give­aways

In 2007, then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning al­lo­cat­ed $100 mil­lion to es­tab­lish nine mega-farms on lands for­mer­ly owned by Ca­roni. The plan was for the farms to be used to train farm­ers in mod­ern agri­cul­tur­al tech­niques, as well as for food crop pro­duc­tion on a scale that would re­duce the coun­try’s food im­port bill.

The mega-farms failed.

Ac­cord­ing to a Ca­roni in­sid­er, Man­ning al­so made 612 acres of lands avail­able for the es­tab­lish­ment of E-Teck parks, none of which ma­te­ri­alised.

In 2010, when Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Peo­ple Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice, the give-away of sub­sidised lands for agri­cul­ture and oth­er pur­pos­es con­tin­ued.

“In Oc­to­ber 2011, Per­sad-Bisses­sar un­veiled a new plan which would put 4,000 acres of agri­cul­tur­al lands for com­mer­cial food pro­duc­tion.

“Four large farm projects were giv­en out at Or­ange Grove, Jern­ing­ham Junc­tion, Ed­in­burgh and Ca­roni,” the source said.

“Cunu­pia Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion got 500 acres, Jayzee’s in Cou­va got 30 acres, Ca­roni Green project got 450 acres.

“Un­der Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharat eight farm sites com­pris­ing a to­tal of 1,473 acres were giv­en out.”

By 2014, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Ca­roni lands was trans­ferred to the Min­istry of Land and Ma­rine Re­sources un­der Jairam Seemu­n­gal.

A Land for the Land­less pro­gramme was launched and with­in five months of Seemu­n­gal tak­ing up that port­fo­lio and he hand­ed out more than 6,000 Ca­roni VSEP leas­es, ex­pe­dit­ed hun­dreds of agri­cul­ture lease re­newals, dis­trib­uted thou­sands of cer­tifi­cates of com­fort, im­ple­ment­ed a state-of-the-art GIS data­base of state lands and for­mu­lat­ed new poli­cies on land man­age­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion to in­clude young farm­ers.

At that time 40,000 peo­ple ap­plied for lands and the suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants were giv­en lots priced be­tween $80,000 and $175,000, de­pend­ing on lo­ca­tion.

Seemu­n­gal said these prices were based on the open mar­ket val­ue de­ter­mined by the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions and the lands were not to be sold for prof­it.

“It is meant to pro­vide you with a place to build your home. In the event that the land must be dis­posed of by sale by you or any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, the dif­fer­ence in the cost you pay for the land now and that of the sale price shall be paid to the state and does not be­long to you,” he ex­plained at that time.

How­ev­er, the Ca­roni source said con­trac­tors and wealthy busi­ness­peo­ple ex­ploit­ed this pro­gramme and ob­tained large tracts of lands.

“Peo­ple be­came rich off of Ca­roni’s lands. When we look at our records, we can see how much of the com­pa­ny’s as­sets have been giv­en away,” the in­sid­er said.

He ex­plained that $600 mil­lion was spent to de­vel­op agri­cul­tur­al es­tates for for­mer Ca­roni work­ers and up to 2014, most of the es­tates were not in pro­duc­tive use.

“In the post-2000 pe­ri­od, we had 5,218 acres un­der pro­posed in­dus­tri­al use and some of that went to the NEC but in 2013 to 2014, Jack Warn­er took a note to Cab­i­net and the lands pre­vi­ous­ly giv­en to NEC went back to the State,” he said.

He said some of the lands al­lo­cat­ed for in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment fell in­to the hands of par­ty fi­nanciers and sup­port­ers.

Forests lands
be­ing grabbed

Con­ser­va­tor of Forests, Den­ny Dipchans­ingh is con­cerned about the il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion of state lands, not on­ly in the for­mer sug­ar cane fields but al­so for­est re­serves.

He said there has been an in­crease in squat­ting.

“We have in­creased pa­trols out­side of the nor­mal work­ing hours to pre­vent fur­ther en­croach­ment and have got­ten as­sis­tance from the TTPS on pa­trols,” he said.

“We will be li­ais­ing with the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion and a more vig­or­ous ap­proach will be im­ple­ment­ed with the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands to evict il­le­gal squat­ters.

“A plan of ac­tion will be im­ple­ment­ed us­ing a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ap­proach with the farm­ers, with re­spect to an en­force­ment ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness pro­gramme,” he said.

Plant re­searcher and farmer Ramdeo Boon­doo said suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have not dealt well with squat­ting on for­mer Ca­roni lands.

“If they start to plant co­conut trees or fig trees to make a bor­der, then know they are block­ing land. This is a very se­ri­ous prob­lem.

“If peo­ple want to use lands for agri­cul­ture, they should be of­fered leas­es so they could plant com­fort­ably,” Boon­doo said.

State agen­cies like T&TEC and WASA had giv­en le­git­i­ma­cy to many land­grab­bers. He said.

“It seemed any­one who has a con­nec­tion in T&TEC or WASA could eas­i­ly pull a string and get lights and wa­ter even though they had no own­er­ship to the land,” Boon­doo said.

(Con­tin­ues on page 8)

TO­MOR­ROW: Land grab­bing es­ca­lat­ed dur­ing COVID-19 lock­down.