(Trinidad Guardian) Determined to stop unscrupulous contractors from benefitting from suspicious land transactions, Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat says he is forwarding evidence to Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi.
Speaking at a land-distribution ceremony in Couva yesterday for former Caroni workers, Rambharat said an ongoing land audit of all State lands, including those owned by Caroni, has yielded evidence of suspicious transactions undertaken between 2010 and 2015.
Saying the cost of developing a lot of land jumped from $151,000 in 2010 to $1.2 million by 2015, Rambharat said a review showed many contractors who developed Caroni lands for the Estate Management Business Development Company Limited (EMBD) failed to honour their agreements.
“The EMBD initiated earlier this year an audit of a particular set of transactions of $400 million spent to build ten roads and out of these ten roads none were completed according to specifications,” Rambharat revealed.
He said some roads were a few kilometres short, the thickness of the asphalt was not according to specifications and the quality of the roads’ sub-base was poor.
“The advice we got is that the EMBD should move to recover a significant amount of money long before the contracts were completed.
“In relation to development of lands in 2010, the average cost of completion of a lot of land was $151,000. It varied from site to site but by 2015, the average cost was way in excess of $750,000. In some cases the lots were $1.2 million,” Rambharat said.
He noted that once evidence was sent to the AG, recommendations would be made to recover the sums or to take steps to prosecute the offenders.
In order not to delay the distribution of residential lots to former Caroni workers, Rambharat said he had asked the recipients to take advantage of offers on areas which were already developed.
While the EMBD, headed by chairman Ronnie Mohammed had to deal with a $2 billion debt to contractors, he said $5 billion more was needed to complete the residential distribution to 8,858 beneficiaries.
Rambharat said he planned to begin distributing non-Caroni leases by April 2017, adding about 3,000 leases have already been distributed by the Government for this year.
“As fast as we encounter problems like the illegal sale of State lands or corruption relating to certain files, they are referred to the Attorney General,” Rambharat added.
He also denied Government planned to take away Caroni lands from the former workers.
“In this country, farmers have used the cry of access roads as an excuse for not putting the lands for productive use but even though Government is putting the necessary infrastructure, do not expect highways or electricity poles and cable to be coming to the lands as if it is an HDC site,” Rambharat added.
He noted that the office of the Commissioner of State Lands was being given the resources and staffing to ensure that those who got leases put the lands to productive use.
