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| Orville London, Chief Secretary of Tobago House of Assembly |
According to a release from the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources has close the Tobago reforestation programme. As a direct result of this shutdown, some 100 workers are now placed on the breadline, a move which did not auger well with Tobago House of Assembly.
Orville London, THA's Chief Secretary said the Ministry's action was carried out without any consultation with the Division of Agriculture, Marine Resources, Marketing and the Environment. He further indicated that the Secretary of the Division Councillor Gary Melville has been instructed to submit proposals for a reforestation programme for Tobago for urgent consideration at the August 8 weekly Executive Council meeting.
The THA stated that the programme was started in 2003 with a mandate to increase the rate of forest regeneration in an effort to mitigate deterioration of the environment. The programee falls under the purview of National Reforestation and Watershed Rehabilitation Programme (NRWRP). On July 13 2012 programme coordinator Dominique Pierre Louis informed Tobago groups that the Ministry has changed the operation and outlook of the programme and was focusing on a different aspect of reforestation.
Louis stated the THA told the groups that, in the light of this, the operation and implementation of the NRWRP will shift from being community-based to having company groups responsible for the maintenance of given areas.
However, the Tobago groups were not given any assurance that they would be engaged in the new programme if they formed companies to carry out the job.
Recently the Peoples Partnership indicated that MP's would recieve ten million for community development, on the heels of this a community programme was destroyed to be replaced with "company groups"
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