Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj said yesterday he was informed that the (Andre) Monteil family was paid $4 million for lands acquired by the State for the construction of Mason Hall Secondary School.

’Is that favouritism for a former high official of the PNM?’ Maharaj asked. Monteil is a former treasurer of the party.

He asked whether any of the other 14 owners, whose lands were acquired around the same time, were also compensated. Maharaj was speaking in the debate on the Land Acquisition motion in the House of Representatives, in which Government was seeking approval for the acquisition of 15 parcels of land. Maharaj said if the Monteil family was so paid, it raised questions of nepotism, inequality of treatment and patronage. He said it was unfair for owners to have their lands acquired by the Government and have to wait for compensation for years.

Labour Minister Rennie Dumas said monies were paid (to the Monteil family) for the purchase of lands but this was done under private treaty. He could not recall the amount. But he stressed that this arrangement had nothing to do with those lands which were acquired under the Land Acquisition Act.

Diego Martin West MP Dr Keith Rowley, speaking earlier, had made the same point as he spoke of the plight of hundreds of persons whose lands had been acquired by the State many years ago and ’they are just waiting there, hoping that some day the fairy would come and pay them’.

’In many cases the owners have died, leaving the land intestate ... the Government has use of the land, the heirs are not paid because it gets harder as you go down the line and ... the thing just drags on and on and on,’ he said.

Rowley recalled that when as Agriculture Minister he brought the Land Acquisition Act to Parliament in 1994, it was with the expectation that Government would have solved the problems and created a new regime of action relating to land acquisition. He said the act provided for 80 per cent payment once the lands were entered upon and the transaction of the payment of the next 20 per cent was to be concluded in a reasonable time frame.

Rowley said the Adelphi Lands (owned by the Monteil family) used for the construction of the Mason Hall Secondary School was entered upon ten years ago ’and the fact that it (approval for acquisiton) was only now coming to the Parliament should demonstrate clearly that the intent of the 1994 act has not been met’.

He called for an amendment to the Tobago House of Assembly Act to give the assembly the power to purchase and own lands acquired for a public purpose in Tobago. Land acquisition in Tobago should not be an issue for the national Parliament, he said.