Hundreds of cocoa farmers from across the country have not been able to sell their produce for more than a month now because the Cocoa Development Company of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd was dissolved last December 18 and a replacement board is yet to be appointed.
Farmers from Lopinot, La Pastora and Biche are among those affected.
The company, a branch of the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, disperses money to buying agents who seek out and purchase the cocoa from farmers across the country.
There are at least eight buying agents in T&T who buy cocoa at a cost of $22 a kilogramme.
That represents the $2 increase approved by the former government to the company last August.
But without a board in place, farmers have been making weekly trips to their respective buyers since December and have had to return home with packed vans of bags and heaps of dried cocoa.
Eustache Borneo, was born and bred on his family's cocoa estate in the Lopinot valleys.
Now 72, Borneo said he had never had to wait that long to get payment and was feeling discouraged.
He has already made two trips with produce exceeding 240 kilogrammes to his buyer in Sangre Grande.
On both occasions he has had to return to his Northern Range estate and made to watch the fine grade cocoa rot away.
"It still in the cocoa house. When it remains here and they don't buy it, it will rotten and we have nothing to get, no profit, nothing. What I will have to do? I will have to abandon the estate because if we can't get no money from the estate what is the sense in working it?" he asked.
Borneo said a few years ago he invested much of his pension money toward the purchase of additional trees which have finally begun to bear.
However, with no one buying his produce he was losing thousands of dollars with each passing week that a board was not installed.
Unable to do much else, Borneo chuckled: "Well we go have to peel cassava, that's what the Prime Minister say."
Acres of cocoa estates across the country are currently filled with pods of bright yellow and rich red cocoa fruit. Now in the peak of the cocoa crop season branches are hung low, ready for picking.
Sheila Garcia, 75, another cocoa estate owner in Lopinot who was affected was troubled over the situation.
She told the GML Enterprise Desk: "Plenty young trees are bearing and I also have on the ground sweating but we have a problem now selling the cocoa because I depending on that to pay the workers.
"It have no board or nothing. Look how many years and that never happen. It's the first time that happen and they never notify the farmers, nobody ever notify us and tell us nothing."
She said a board needed to be installed soon, as it was seriously impacting the farmers.
"That's poor people living because the little pension I getting not doing nothing and now you see they raise VAT, they raise all different thing. How much thing you could do with that little bit of money."
Effective yesterday, nearly all processed goods, which were previously VAT free, were marked up by 12.5 per cent while other goods which carried a 15 per cent tax were decreased to 12.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, one farmer located in the eastern lush lands of Biche, Felix Modeste, was having the same problem.
He said he sold his produce every two weeks and had so far lost two sales exceeding $4,000.
His cocoa has been left to spoil as well and with no money to get, he has been unable to pay workers for tending the land and picking, cleaning, fermenting and drying the fruit.
Modeste said the situation was sad and worrying. "I am surprised something like that could happen. In my 60-70 years in this business I never heard the buyer not having money; a board has always been there," he added.
Just like the Lopinot community, there are over 30 cocoa farmers in Biche.
One buying agent, Sookhdeo Bidaisee and Company Limited, explained that when it purchased cocoa from the farmers it was sold to the Cocoa and Coffee Marketing Co-operative Society Ltd, an export agent.
Manager of Sookhdeo Bidaisee and Company Limited, Guptee Bidaisee, told the GML Enterprise Desk that hundreds of farmers were distraught as most of them have already had to discard large quantities of dried cocoa.
He said: "Governments have come and gone and we never had this problem. What is the problem this time we are not sure but it never had a standstill like this before and nobody saying anything."