SEVERAL Hope Estate tenants took to the streets early yesterday in protest of the exceedingly high rent they’re now being asked to pay by the new Board of Directors.

From around 08:30hrs, some 20 or more Hope Estate farmers bearing placards calling for his resignation assembled just outside the office of Board Chairman Iamei Aowmathi, whom they say is solely to be blamed for their predicament.

They told the press that while they do not disagree with an increase in the rates, they believe the current asking rate is too high. According to one tenant, who said that farming is the only trade he knows, he is finding it difficult to pay the $15,000 now being asked per acre of land. He currently has two-and-a-half acres under rice.

Noting that the former government had promised some of them land for farming and dwelling after relocating them from the flood-prone Mahaica Creek, he said they eventually had to buy land off other people, since the promise was false.

He said that, in the eight years he has been at Hope, he has had only two “good crops”, as the land he was given was semi-forested and very costly to clear.

A notice issued farmers by the Hope Estate Board indicates that, effective January 1, 2016, they will now have to pay $15,000 per acre of land, and not the $2000 to which they were accustomed. They were also advised that a $100,000 charge is now applicable for between one and ten acres of permanent crops.

Meanwhile, newly appointed Administrative Manager, Aseef Balmacoon, has been barred from taking office, with Board Chairman Aowmathi claiming that Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder does not have the power to make appointments because that authority rests solely with the Board.

Balmacoon produced a letter dated December 1, declaring that he was appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture as “Administrative Manager on contract/gratuity terms within the Hope Coconut Industries Limited, in the first instance for a period of one year with effect from 2015-12-01 to 2016-11-30…”

However, Aowmathi claims that he is not aware of any such appointment by the Agriculture Minister.