DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer Ca­roni (1975) Ltd em­ploy­ee and cur­rent head of an as­so­ci­a­tion of farm­ers is seek­ing the dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the al­leged al­lo­ca­tion of lands to em­ploy­ees of the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion.

At­tor­ney Richard Jag­gasar, who is rep­re­sent­ing Cen­tral Farm­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dhan­raj Balka­ran, made the re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) in a le­gal let­ter sent to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries.

In the let­ter, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Jag­gasar claimed that his client be­came con­cerned af­ter he saw a re­port from in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Mark Bas­sant over the al­leged al­lo­ca­tion.

The re­port, which was based on cor­re­spon­dence be­tween Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands Paula Drakes and Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry Ric Javed Ali in De­cem­ber last year, sug­gest­ed that Drakes had be­gun a process of dis­trib­ut­ing parcels of land to staff of the di­vi­sion, which falls un­der her purview.

The de­ci­sion was re­port­ed­ly based on the staff mem­bers be­ing pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied ac­cess to hous­ing pro­vid­ed by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) with some be­ing al­leged­ly forced to squat to avoid home­less­ness.

Bas­sant’s re­port al­leged that some of those who re­ceived al­lo­ca­tions al­ready had hous­es while some re­fused as they were not first-time home­own­ers.

Stat­ing that his client was deeply con­cerned by the al­leged ac­tiv­i­ty, Jag­gasar said, “This de­vel­op­ment is par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious giv­en that for­mer em­ploy­ees of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly de­nied the lands right­ly promised to them un­der the vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion (VSEP) for near­ly two decades.”

“The clan­des­tine al­lo­ca­tion of these lands not on­ly un­der­mines the rights of for­mer Ca­roni work­ers but al­so rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about trans­paren­cy and fair­ness in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of State re­sources,” he added.

Jag­gasar ques­tioned whether the di­vi­sion’s staff were ear­mark­ing land for them­selves when con­duct­ing of­fi­cial site vis­its in the past.

Jag­gasar sug­gest­ed that the pol­i­cy af­fect­ed cit­i­zens, who have been await­ing al­lo­ca­tions for some time.

Jag­gasar, who claimed that Balka­ran rep­re­sents 200 farm­ers, said that he and his mem­bers were con­cerned that the plan was not eq­ui­table and just. He said they are call­ing for an im­me­di­ate ces­sa­tion and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion and doc­u­ments in­clud­ed the cor­re­spon­dence re­ferred to in the re­port, as well as the min­istry’s re­sponse to it. Balka­ran is al­so seek­ing the re­lease of in­for­ma­tion on the spe­cif­ic em­ploy­ees who ben­e­fit­ed.

While Jag­gasar sug­gest­ed that the re­quest did not seek in­for­ma­tion that could be con­sid­ered ex­empt­ed un­der the FOIA, he not­ed that in the event the min­istry thinks oth­er­wise, it could utilise sec­tion 35 which al­lows for the dis­clo­sure of ex­empt­ed ma­te­r­i­al if such is in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est.

Jag­gasar gave the min­istry 30 days in which to re­spond to his re­quest be­fore he filed a law­suit over the is­sue.