Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Farm­ers along the Va­len­cia stretch are call­ing for an im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to stop peo­ple who are pen­e­trat­ing the For­est Re­serve lands in Va­len­cia by sit­ting the land, erect­ing steel poles and il­le­gal sell­ing of State lands.

Ac­cord­ing to the farm­ers, squat­ters are buy­ing State land from a “com­mu­ni­ty leader” based in a near­by squat­ting de­vel­op­ment.

The farm­ers, of Turn­er Dairy Farm­ing Es­tab­lish­ment, re­ly on that strip of pro­tect­ed for­est land to pre­vent their cows from wan­der­ing on­to the East­ern Main Road (Va­len­cia Stretch). They al­so claimed that when the peo­ple are around, their lives are be­ing threat­ened.

“We have to arm our­selves with weapons be­cause these peo­ple who are il­le­gal­ly sec­tion­ing off the land and sell­ing it are there round-the-clock and they are threat­en­ing to kill us. We want every­body to in­ter­vene, even the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith,” one farmer said, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied for fear of his and his fam­i­ly’s safe­ty.

“These peo­ple com­ing here and thiev­ing our an­i­mals too and we are left help­less and count­ing our loss­es,” the farmer added.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port on Cari-Bois News from June 30, a larg­er num­ber of trees were fresh­ly cleared and the land cor­doned off us­ing wire and C-chan­nel steel beams, which they were told to pre­pare plots for sale.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that a dwelling house struc­ture had been erect­ed while the sign iden­ti­fy­ing the area as part of the Va­len­cia For­est Re­serve had dis­ap­peared.

An of­fi­cial at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, who wished strict anonymi­ty, said over the past two years or more, farm­ers have lodged nu­mer­ous com­plaints to sev­er­al agen­cies with­in the min­istry and the Va­len­cia Po­lice Sta­tion.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat said that the Con­ser­va­tor of Forests Den­ny Dipchans­ingh has ad­vised that “this of­fence was in­ves­ti­gat­ed two weeks ago by State lands of­fi­cer Mr Gup­ta and Forester I Chi­ma Rud­der.”

“Two evic­tion no­tices were is­sued to the per­son who built the house on the re­serve. Since then the of­fi­cer has vis­it­ed the area every week and is card­ed to go again this week with the State lands of­fi­cer,” Ramb­harat said.