She made the statement as she toured lands in the Couva/Point Lisas area.
The lands, which were originally given to farmers in a voluntary separation of employment plan for workers of the former Caroni (1975) Limited, were taken back as part of the previous Government’s plans for industrialization.
Farmers groups, led by Agriculture and Community Activist Dr Wayne Kublalsingh, invited the Minister to visit the Couva/Point Lisas area, since much of the lands were marked for Energy downstream development.
During the tour, the Minister was briefed on the lands which were available and discussed with the farmers the potential for a balance to be struck between industrialization and farming.
“Let me re-commit to you that the Government will not sacrifice agriculture for industrialization. Moving forward with an industrialization program will not mean - and you can be sure of that - it will not mean that it will be at the expense of agriculture.
"We will work together and strike a balance. As the Government of the People’s Partnership has always done, through collaboration and consultation, we can work together to find the best way forward so that the farmers, and our industrialization programme can work together for a national benefit."
1 comment:
There have been plenty of opportunities in the past weeks to ponder on the matter of land use.
The HDC, farmers, Ministers Moonilal and Bharath, the Prime Minister plus more than enough others have put their 5 cents worth into the debate.
And whether well meaning and objective, or self-serving to a greater or lesser degree in their objectives, they are all “Putting the cart before the horse”, as Gran used to say. And to that all we now have the Minister of Energy adding her assurances.
Trouble is that any land use decision, anywhere, is always a compromise. There is always a finite amount of land and the various potential uses and interest groups compete for it.
More so of course in this country of two small islands, with their limited acreage. Where one puts a house, or a factory, one cannot generally farm . Or vice versa.
So it intrigues and annoys me to have read several recent articles in the press by John Spence, UWI professor emeritus, on this very subject. In fact in one he reveals that a land use survey process was initiated in the 1940’s. A process that withered on the vine and to this day has still not been resumed.
Seemingly the procedure was designed to assess the relative value of acreage as farm land, either for one particular kind of crop or as multipurpose farmland.
How sensible and appropriate it would be for that kind of criteria to be employed now.
Before we parcel off more 2 acre lots, with or without road access, drainage, water, etc and award them to retrenched factory workers as horticultural land, albeit many will opt instead for a house as their one-time crop.
Equally when are we going to recognise as a nation that acres of shoebox HDC housing are inherently wasteful of land, as well as minimalistic and downright ugly?
We need surely to build more multi-story housing to accommodate more people per acre.
I would so like to see decisions made on the land use topic with at least some semblance of rationale and logical consistency attached to it, instead of just options measured according to their expedient potential to harvest votes for a particular politician or a party, or as part of a voter padding strategy.
The trouble is though that governmental entities, as their wholly owned companies, are appallingly inept, even if trying to do what the public would generally approve of in principle.
They tend consistently to stumble around like a bunch of 8 year olds, “playing at work”, with no intelligent , congruent strategy, objective or standards. Take WASA, SWMCOL, TSTT, TTPOST, T&TEC, the EMA as examples and you'll see what I mean.
Give a land use policy project to any of the usual suspects and you just KNOW it is going to take decades and cost vast amounts unnecessarily.
Post a Comment