Former Caroni workers entitled to free land – Maharaj

http://www.indocaribbeanworld.com/archives/2007/december_19_2007/trinidad_tobago.htm

Ramesh Maharaj

Port-of-Spain – Former Caroni (1975) Ltd workers are entitled to free agricultural and housing land, says Ramesh Maharaj, head of the Trinidad and Tobago Civil Rights Association and the MP for Tabaquite. Maharaj was addressing former sugar workers who attended a special meeting of the All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers’ Trade Union at Rienzi Complex, Couva, last week to discuss the ruling of Justice Lennox Deyalsingh. The Supreme Court judge ordered the government to hand over leases to the ex-sugar workers by June 2008. The government had earlier announced that the residential land was being sold for (TT) $20,000 to $30,000 a lot. Maharaj said part of the VSEP package, which workers accepted when Caroni folded as a sugar producer in 2003, was the promise of land. He said, however, that nowhere in the agreement was it stated that workers would have to pay for the land. Maharaj said all workers should be entitled to residential land regardless if they own property or not. He said to deny any former sugar worker that right would be unfair. Maharaj said if the government intended to appeal the decision of the Supreme Court, he had plans to put legal and political pressure on them to the point where Prime Minister Patrick Manning and his Cabinet could be jailed for acting in contempt of court. Maharaj said he intended to approach the Appeal Court and Privy Council to have these matters dealt with within a few months if the government planned to appeal the judgment. He said the government intended to defraud sugar workers by transferring the land assets from Caroni (1975) Ltd to the State. He said this would have put the union in a position where it could have got anything from Caroni (1975) Ltd if the ATSGWTU had gone to the Industrial Court. Maharaj said the public statements made by Manning, John Rahael, a former minister of agriculture and Christine Sahadeo, former junior finance minister gave the assurance that Caroni workers would have the first priority to lands. He said based on these statements, the matter was brought before the courts. Maharaj said the workers could also legally block any individual or group outside the former sugar workers from grabbing Caroni lands before they get their leases.

Gov't already spent $500-million to develop Caroni 'sites'

2007/12/16 19:30:00 ***

For the second time since the last General election, we, the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago are hearing the startling disclosure from a senior Manning-Cabinet Minister that he did not know the magnitude of the cabinet portfolio which he was given.

"In a litany of "prayers" Senator Dr. Lenny Saith's confesses that "the government" cannot meet Justice Lennox Deyalsingh's judicial deadline to honour its contract with the ex-Caroni workers.

Why so? Because "it was a very time-consuming and difficult exercise.

"Dr. Saith's confession is an insult to the intelligence of us mere mortals and may, yet, prove to be an albatross around the PNM's neck!

Here is the superman who, for the past four years, has been chairing the Cabinet Committee responsible for implementing the different aspects of the Caroni VSEP package "deal", coming now to tell us that, having spent over TT$500,000,000 of the people's money, not a single agricultural site is as yet ready to be handed over to the former workers!

Compare that, if you would, to a certain TT$148,000,000.00 castle that was built in mere months. What conclusion would the reader draw?

Aha! That the Chinese possess the magic wand and they should have been given those TT$500,000,000! They would have gotten the job done, on time!

Seriously though, Dr. Saith needs to identify the contractors who won those TT$500,000,000 worth of contracts and the basis/bases upon which they got and, despite their tardiness, still have, those contracts.

Now, at first reading, Dr. Saith's apology suggests that, in fact, a helluva lot of work has been done and that nearly everything is completed insofar as on-site infrastructure works are concerned.

Allow me to quote from the early portion of the Sunday Express of December 16th, 2007 story headlined "Saith: Tough to meet deadline.":

Dealing with (VSEP) package, Saith said, "Government had spent $500 million developing the Caroni lands for distribution to the former workers. He said that by May 2008, sites at Jerningham would be 100 per cent ready, at Waterloo-95 per cent ready, Orange Grove-85 per cent, Longeria-80 per cent, Exchange-70 per cent and Felicity-65 per cent. Accordingly offers for some 1,369 sites at Orange Grove, Longeria, Caroni, Waterloo and Jerningham would be available to former workers".

In fact, the goodly doctor was not referring to farming lands at all! He was talking about residential lands, nothing more, or less! Because, lower down in the same article it is stated:

"On the issue of the two acre agricultural lots, Saith said government, recognised that it too would take time, given the construction in the country and the problem of getting contractors to prepare the sites. It therefore decided to carve out the two acre (sic) lots once the land was graded and allow some people to see and have access to their lots, he said. He said Government also relaxed the conditions so that persons could get licences to register as farmers which would enable them to access all the incentives offered by government. And this was being done, he said, prior to them receiving their leases. He said over 1,000 people had already received farmer's licences under this arrangement.

"When he says, "government, recognised that it too would take time", I ain't sure if, by the word "it", he means, "the government" or "the logistics".

In any event, it is clear that the issue of providing the ex-Caroni workers with the tools to become independent income earners was never a priority, as far as the Manning/PNM administration was/is concerned.

So, a situation exists where TT$500,000,000.00 has been spent, so far! To do what?

To develop residential plots on ex-Caroni lands! How many plots? We do not know! What we know is that all that money was not spent to develop just the 1,369 plots (Dr. Saith calls them "sites"; we know what he means) that are "earmarked" to be leased to ex-Caroni workers.

Yeah? Says who? Common sense does! For, to suggest that it was would mean that each of those 1,369 lots cost, on average, some TT$365,200.00 to develop! Not so?

It would also mean that the ATSGWU and the other unions involved in negotiating the VSEP packages for their members would have had to have been the biggest financial jackasses that every existed!

How so? Because that would have been tantamount to them saying to Caroni, "Okay sirs! We want you to take, on average, $365,000.00 plus, of YOUR hard cash, and develop each lot. Our members would then rent these lots from you for a limited time, paying with $20-30,000.00 THEIR hard cash. We give you those instructions because, in our considered judgment, we find that to be a much better deal for our members than you keeping your land and, instead, giving each of our members the $365, 000.00 in cash, up front, punto final!

"Everything considered, the following questions need to be answered:

How many residential lots have been actually developed? Where?

Who, besides ex-Caroni workers, are the persons to whom these thousands of other lots are to be "given"?

Who selects those other persons? And, At price would those other persons pay for ex-Caroni lands?"

Editorial

Overdue attack on ‘business as usual’

http://legacy.guardian.co.tt/archives/2007-12-09/editorial.html 

 

Finance Minister Karen Nunes Tesheira has reassuringly assigned “priority” status to the distribution of land long promised to former sugar workers.

 

New on the job, Ms Nunez Tesheira is thus going where her predecessors, Prime Minister Patrick Manning and former junior finance ministers, had never gone.

She is proceeding with urgency in the direction of correcting a manifest injustice to workers whose only fault had been to take the Government’s word.

It is just as well that, even in advance of reading Justice Lennox Deyalsingh’s decision, she must agree with his finding:

“Government’s lack of the sense of urgency with this matter is, in my view, tantamount to an abuse of power.”

Vexed question

The loss-making, State-owned Caroni 1975 Ltd had for been decades a vexed question that had claimed the at least rhetorical attention of successive administrations.

From early 2002, the Manning administration evidently saw the Caroni question as one it must determinedly resolve and with relative swiftness.

As it later did with BWIA, another haemorrhaging state enterprise, the Government ended the agonies of indecision and uncertainty. It resolutely set about closing those entities seen to have no promising future under traditional arrangements except as endless claimants on Treasury funds.

The promise of land as part of a settlement package to workers set to lose their sugar-industry jobs, was obviously meant to neutralise opposition to the closure of a company, and an industry that had constituted both a lifeline and a way of life for tens of thousands.

A vexed question escalated, however, into a vexing matter that, with the litigation enterprise of Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, reached the High Court for judicial review.

It is now notorious that lawyers for the Government sought to weasel out of the land-distribution pledge by arguing it did not confer a legitimate expectation.

Seeking to have it both ways, however, the State also declared it had been taking steps to prepare the leases for the workers.

Justice Deyalsingh rejected the proposition, startling in its implication, that the workers had no legitimate right to expect the Prime Minister to keep his word. The judgment also held that steps allegedly being taken to fulfill the pledge were far too halting to mark good faith.
That not a single plot of land had been distributed in the four years up to mid-2007 was scandalous, and he properly denounced such foot-dragging:

“Government’s attitude seems to have been ‘business as usual,’ not really concerned about the frustration that delay in meeting the promise was causing.”

The judge went further. He discredited the authorities’ “prognosis” for the completion date of lease arrangements, noting that earlier deadlines had not been met.

As has been well demonstrated, the Government’s patience with its own inefficiencies amounts to an arrogant presumption that the public should simply be prepared to wait and wait and wait.

Lower standards

In all its spheres (health, education, transport notably) public administration sets lower and lower standards for service and performance.

The over-centralised Manning Cabinet system is geared more to securing control than to ensuring productivity and performance.

It is encouraging, though long overdue, that the High Court is signalling impatience with “business as usual.” Justice Deyalsingh has set action dates for implementation of his ruling.

The Government may appeal. But its doing so will have the effect of postponing yet again the fulfillment of what was meant to be taken as a solemn pledge to a powerless sector of the society.

“I find that the promise to the former sugar workers has not been kept,” Justice Deyalsingh wrote, “and that their legitimate expectation has been, and is being, frustrated by the lack of reasonably expeditious action.”

From that ruling, and by any fair-minded assessment, the Government has already lost a moral case.

Judge orders Govt: Give Caroni workers their land leases

Lennox Deyalsingh

Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj

Judge says:

• Give ex-Caroni workers thier leases by June
• The four-year delay is tantamount to an abuse of power

BY INDARJIT SEURAJ

Saturday 8th December, 2007  

http://legacy.guardian.co.tt/archives/2007-12-08/news9.html 

 

High Court judge Lennox Deyalsingh has ordered the Government to grant leases to ex-Caroni (1975) Ltd workers for Caroni lands which were promised to them more than four years ago.

The judge set a deadline of June 30, 2008, for the two-acre agricultural plots to be leased to 7,900 displaced workers and ordered that “proper infrastructure, including access, drainage and irrigation facilities” be attached to each plot.

 

“Government’s lack of the sense of urgency with this matter is, in my view, tantamount to an abuse of power,” he said.

The ruling was made in favour of the Civil Rights Association which brought the judicial review application against Prime Minister Patrick Manning.

And Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, SC, who argued for the sugar workers, said, afterwards, the ruling was a testament of judicial review and the rule of law.

 

“The law of judicial review is demonstrated by this judgment to be a powerful machinery for the supreme courts to prevent abuse of prime ministerial power and to deliver justice to the oppressed,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.

 

Deyalsingh further ordered that residential plots with all the proper infrastructure—including access, water and electricity—be given to the workers.

The lawsuit challenged the delay by the Government to grant the leases to the workers—as part of the VSEP package—after the sugar producing state-owned enterprise was shut down.

Cabinet decided to grant the leases and later promised to do so in a public statement by the Prime Minister at a post-Cabinet press conference on November 20, 2003.

 

‘Govt pushing

back the dates’

Deyalsingh, in his judgment, said the Government kept “pushing back” the dates for the handing over of the leases.

“It is now four years from the promise and not one lease has been granted to one former sugar worker,” he said.

He said there was no credible date when the leases would be granted, and instead only a “repetition of all the things that have to be done.”

“A public authority which makes a promise and thereby creates a legitimate expectation must uphold its promise and do what is necessary to ensure that its promise is kept...and further, must do it expeditiously,” the judge said.

The former workers, in their lawsuit, claimed they accepted the VSEP package on the basis that they would receive the lands as promised by the Government.

They contended that the distribution had not started since the closure of Caroni in 2003.

Lawyers for the Prime Minister had argued that it was not a legitimate expectation and even if it was, they were taking steps to give the leases to the workers.

T&T Civil Rights Association filed the judicial review application on the workers’ behalf in December 2003, after they claimed the Government had intentions of reneging on its promise to former sugar workers.

Maharaj, head of the Civil Rights Association, led Rikki Harnanan, Darrell Allahar and Vijaya Maharaj for the Association.

Reginald Armour, SC, Vanessa Gopaul and Rehanna Hosein appeared for the Prime Minister, who was named as the sole respondent in the matter.

The Prime Minister is expected to appeal the decision.

Finance minister responds to ruling

Karen Nunes-Tesheira

Minister of Finance Karen Nunes-Tesheira yesterday said that she had not yet seen the judgement and it would therefore be premature of her to comment further.

In any event, Nunez-Tesheira reiterated the Government’s commitment to distribute the lands.

“The Government and we at ministry (of Finance) are committed to distributing Caroni land and granting leases to the farmers,” she said.

“That is one of the priority matters I am focusing on.” (UTR)