After allegedly farming on acres of land in Golconda for decades, farmers say they were barred from their fields, their crops bulldozed, and the lands given to a private citizen, mere months before the general election. Some of the farmers held a silent protest outside the Ministry of Agriculture's Land Management Division this morning. Rynessa Cutting has more.
00:00I created that road to access my garden to plant and I was arrested. Five nights and five days over the long Easter weekend I spent in jail. It was very uncomfortable for me. I slept four hours in that whole ordeal because it's concrete, the pummel, it's a sleep on another, it's a sleep on the concrete.
00:21Retro-ingested farmers are fighting for their lives after their livelihood was brutally snatched away mere months before the general election.
00:31It happened in February of this year under the PNM government. It happened. Twenty acres of land was taken which I occupied and given to someone. They came and grade down our crops.
00:48The farmers say they had been farming the land consistently over the years but had never managed to acquire the proper documentation.
01:11That was a county cane field and it was abandoned for a little while. A long while because my mother and my mother is 80 years old and she married at 15 years and she planted the land since she come there. Right?
01:25Used to plant the land, they come and give me a squatting letter from 2003 to come up for the land. Then county come and close it and they say, okay, let's go ahead and continue planting the land.
01:36The farmers further claim that they have been trying to acquire leases for the land but to no avail. Yet to their surprise, a private citizen was allegedly able to secure a license for the lands earlier this year.
01:50We've been applying. We have government documents, the verification code. We've been applying since 2013. Some of them have been applying since 2003.
02:00So to come and award someone a license three months before election, I find it was kind of fishy seeing that it have people there, it's a procedure.
02:08And we have been asking the commissioner of state land, what is the procedure towards awarding people land. And she has been avoiding that question.
02:15And so state lands, we have to thank them for edifying us on this process. When, when, when, when they told us that a license is only allocated for five acres and this was awarded to 20 acres.
02:26I'm just saying that it's time commissioner to do the right thing. You know, this has gone on for far too long and you are in power. You have, you have the authority to do the right thing and we are just pleading on you to do the right thing.
02:43Well, TV6 News contacted the commissioner of state lands, Ms. Paula Drake's, who indicated that the farmers did not have authorization for the lands. Neither did they have proof of having planted the lands for decades.
02:57She says if someone was granted a license, it is because they would have gone through the proper process and obtained a program of development.
03:05TV6 News has also brought the matter to the attention of the minister of agriculture.
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