RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram says the Cab­i­net has ap­proved a ma­jor en­vi­ron­men­tal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme to re­for­est lands im­pact­ed by en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

His com­ments came as dozens of Rio Claro res­i­dents, led by for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for the area and pres­i­dent of the Rio Claro Un­em­ploy­ment As­so­ci­a­tion (RCUA), Louis Castil­lo, marched to the Point Lisas Round­about in Cou­va yes­ter­day, call­ing for the re­plant­i­ng of forests cleared for the Cas­cadu­ra project and long-promised jobs for res­i­dents. Rati­ram con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment had signed off on a com­pre­hen­sive ini­tia­tive un­der the Re­leaf TT pro­gramme, which will see 102 hectares of land re­for­est­ed and more than 236,000 trees plant­ed.

He said the pro­gramme is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide em­ploy­ment for more than 150 peo­ple, with work­ers to be en­gaged through the Forestry Di­vi­sion—ad­dress­ing one of the key de­mands raised by pro­test­ers. Castil­lo said res­i­dents, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the Rio Claro Un­em­ploy­ment As­so­ci­a­tion, had com­plained of years of bro­ken promis­es, with some say­ing they were ready and will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in re­for­esta­tion ef­forts but had not been giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties. Rati­ram, how­ev­er, crit­i­cised the protest’s lead­er­ship, de­scrib­ing it as po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven and ac­cus­ing Castil­lo of ad­vanc­ing a “mis­lead­ing” nar­ra­tive.

The min­is­ter fur­ther ar­gued that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion stems from “years of mis­man­age­ment, in­ac­tion and hol­low com­mit­ments” un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, claim­ing that lands were cleared with­out prop­er re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion plans.

De­spite this, Rati­ram em­pha­sised that the present Gov­ern­ment in­tends to take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach, guid­ed by struc­tured, sci­ence-based en­vi­ron­men­tal restora­tion. He al­so not­ed that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny has met all le­gal re­quire­ments for its Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance in re­la­tion to the Cas­cadu­ra project. Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s protest, res­i­dents like Nan­di­ni Ram­bar­ran and Michelle Ann Si­mon spoke of on­go­ing hard­ship, un­em­ploy­ment and the need for both en­vi­ron­men­tal restora­tion and eco­nom­ic sup­port.

Ram­bar­ran said she was a herbal­ist, and the de­struc­tion of the for­est trees had af­fect­ed them. She al­so said she had ap­plied for grants but nev­er re­ceived any.

“We are will­ing to work. The work that we want to do is very, very im­por­tant—we want to plant back the for­est,” said Ram­bar­ran, who said she lived in a di­lap­i­dat­ed home. “We have chil­dren suf­fer­ing. We have old peo­ple suf­fer­ing. Please hear our plight,” she said.