Clarke: Estates should fall into hands of Gov’t

Heavily indebted agricultural lands bailed out by the Government should be added to Crown Lands.

 

Sharing this opinion, Opposition Member of Parliament for St. George North, Gline Clarke, said that the practice of bailing out plantations that have run up in debt and then returning them to their owners must come to an end.

 

Speaking as Parliament debated a resolution guaranteeing Barbados Agricultural Management Co. Ltd. $73 million yesterday, he used the opportunity to point fingers to those lands owned by failed insurance company CLICO.

 

“In St. John, there are about 2 000 acres of land owned by CLICO. What do we do with this land? I think that since Government had been prepared to bail out CLICO, then these estates should fall into the hands of Government. I do not want to see a situation where Government would then revert these lands back into the hands of the CLICO or into the hands of the private sector. If we are supposed to bail out an entity, then ten years from now Government decides to put it back to the private sector, it makes no sense to me.

 

“The Government has to manage those lands. I am talking about Poole, Todds, Malvern and Wakefield and some of the other estates in St. John, which have now run to ruin and all they are growing now is cow itch, bush and occasionally the monkeys and so on,” he said.

 

Meanwhile, Clarke insisted that serious aid be given to those workers within the sugar industry, claiming that in many cases these individuals only took home around $300 per week and were in fact struggling to make ends meet.

 

He said that this was critical as the sugar industry was still needed.

 

“We have accepted the fact that without the sugar cane industry a lot of things would happen – lands would run to ruin, it is needed for aesthetic purposes, and it still employs over 5 000 people,” he told those in Parliament yesterday afternoon. (JMB)