It
seems astonishingly slipshod for the Government to have
allowed the situation at Caroni to fall into such disarray
that Christine Sahadeo would now have to be insisting that
in the “future” the vesting of lands there would
be transparent.
Considering the political heat generated by the merest mention of the name of Caroni (1975) Ltd,
and match it with the eager rancour of the Opposition on behalf of the plight of ex-Caroni employees even before they took VSEP, and it seems clear that transparency should have been job number one from the start.
But Minister Sahadeo will have to get a lot more convincing and deliver more than promises.
“Extraordinary transparency” means a lot more than running everything past Cabinet. The people who are on the line after accepting VSEP need to know that they are being supported in their hopes for an independent life and that they won’t be bypassed in some perceived land rush by higher profile businesses.
As things stand, the ex-Caroni employees have a lot to be concerned about.
Construction has begun on warehouses and a housing development on former Caroni lands despite statements to them from the Estate Management Business Development Company charged with regulating these land transfers that until the Vesting Bill is passed in Parliament, they can’t get access to their promised acreage.
So while business proceeds for companies capable of starting big projects, not a square foot of land has been sold to unemployed former Caroni workers as their VSEP payments slowly run out.
There’s simply no excuse in claiming that a valid list of eligible workers wasn’t available.
The list of everyone who was paid VSEP would have been a good place to start and how could the whole process have been so poorly planned that it would become necessary for thousands of applicants of these lands to have to apply for the lands twice?
The ex-Caroni workers who accepted the Government’s promises and plans in good faith have been handled in an extraordinarily cavalier manner and there are little signs of change.
Minister Sahadeo has shown grit and determination in her handling of accountability in the local energy sector...now she must bring the same focus to bear on ending the unease surrounding Caroni.
It’s simply not good enough to tell people who have already been waiting for almost a year that the matter will be cleared up in six month’s time.
It’s no longer possible to think about this situation bureaucratically if the Government hopes to pull even a political draw from this growing morass.
There’s no reason why the Government shouldn’t have been talking about transparency in its disbursement of Caroni lands and outlining the process six months before the Caroni workers took their VSEP instead of months afterward.
Thousands of former Caroni workers are waiting to hear and more compellingly, to see what happens next. If there is unauthorised development on Caroni lands, then it should be swiftly investigated and brought to a halt if that turns out to be the case.
Systems and processes need to be brought to bear on a situation that’s putting hardworking people through a bureaucratic wringer unnecessarily, and the Government needs to show a more clearly articulated sense of urgency and concern for the Caroni workers who took them at their word.
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