Shal­iza Has­sanali

A $600,000 Agri­cul­ture Ranger Squad (ARS), de­vel­oped un­der the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in 2009 to fight the scourge of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, is ex­pect­ed to be re­placed by se­cu­ri­ty firms. The squad, com­pris­ing 19 of­fi­cers, was a pi­lot project ini­ti­at­ed un­der for­mer min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Arnold Pig­gott. The project was farmer-dri­ven.

The of­fi­cers, who were trained by mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the T&T De­fence Force and SAUTT, worked for one year on con­tract, which end­ed on Au­gust 3, 2010. Since then, the squad, which op­er­at­ed at its re­fur­bished head­quar­ters at Brechin Cas­tle, Cou­va, has been hang­ing in the bal­ance, with no word on their fu­ture.

Many of the of­fi­cers queried the ra­tio­nale for the in­tense train­ing, the pur­chase of three four-wheel-dri­ve ve­hi­cles and the in­jec­tion of thou­sands of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars on a squad, which has now been an­ni­hi­lat­ed. A tidy sum was al­so spent on the of­fi­cers' kits, which in­clud­ed uni­forms, bul­let­proof vests, torch­lights, weight scales, ra­dios, hand­cuffs and ex­pand­able ba­tons.

Mon­ey was al­so ex­pend­ed on the re­fur­bish­ment of its head­quar­ters, which was equipped with sleep­ing sta­tions, a hold­ing cell and a safe to se­cure guns and am­mu­ni­tion. The of­fi­cers pa­trolled Coun­ty Ca­roni, cov­er­ing 215 square miles, which was di­vid­ed in­to four wards: Cunu­pia, Ch­agua­nas, Cou­va and Montser­rat.

Da­ta ob­tained from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice showed that in 2004, the high­est in­ci­dent of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny was record­ed in Cou­va, Tabaquite and Tal­paro. A to­tal of 882 farm­ers record­ed loss of crops, while 202 live­stock farm­ers were re­lieved of an­i­mals. Davin­dra Sam­sun­dar, an ARS II, who col­lect­ed $8,500 a month, said he could not un­der­stand why the of­fi­cers' con­tracts were not re­newed since they had main­tained the high lev­el of ser­vice de­mand­ed by farm­ers and even worked with mem­bers of the TTPS in road­block ex­er­cis­es.

Sam­sun­dar said re­ports and da­ta com­piled by the ARS, showed that they had per­formed, which was out­lined in a let­ter sent to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said he want­ed to be­lieve that mil­lions were spent to get the squad op­er­a­tional, which was be­ing kept a se­cret. Gra­tu­ity, Sam­sun­dar said, was al­so owed to the of­fi­cers by the min­istry.

Pleads for re­new­al of con­tracts

Ronald Steele, di­rec­tor of the ARS, in a let­ter dat­ed Au­gust 20, 2010, that was sent to the min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ed­wina Lea­cock, re­quest­ed an ex­ten­sion of the in­di­vid­ual con­tracts of his squad, so they could con­tin­ue to fo­cus on polic­ing prae­di­al lar­ce­ny ac­tiv­i­ties, to part­ner with all forms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing the agri-busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties, and to stop the crim­i­nal el­e­ments from in­vad­ing farms.

In­sist­ing that the squad func­tioned with lim­it­ed re­sources, Steele al­so out­lined their achieve­ments in graphs and charts. In show­ing their strengths, weak­ness­es, op­por­tu­ni­ties, threats, ob­jec­tives, ini­tia­tives and im­prove­ments, Steele ad­mit­ted that a squad of 19 of­fi­cers was in­ad­e­quate to po­lice farms, while their bud­get did not sup­port op­er­a­tions for train­ing and equip­ment.

Its head­quar­ters, Steele ex­plained, al­so lacked an ad­e­quate as­set-pro­tec­tion sys­tem, name­ly CCTV, and four of­fi­cers could not ob­tain a firearm user em­ploy­ee cer­tifi­cate. How­ev­er, he showed that the strengths of the squad re­mained with its com­mit­ment, its es­tab­lished proven train­ing pro­gramme and an ex­cel­lent work­ing re­la­tion­ship with oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies.

The ob­jec­tive of the ARS, Steele in­sist­ed, was to re­lieve the TTPS of the di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of deal­ing with prae­di­al lar­ce­ny and to elim­i­nate the fre­quent at­tacks on all agri­cul­tur­al and live­stock farm­ers. Steele rec­om­mend­ed that man­pow­er be in­creased to 40 of­fi­cers to ef­fec­tive­ly func­tion.

$600,000 spent to es­tab­lish squad

On Thurs­day, Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said he had no plans of re­new­ing the con­tracts of the squad, which he de­scribed as "in­ef­fec­tive." The cost to es­tab­lish the squad, Bharath said, amount­ed to $600,000. This fig­ure rep­re­sent­ed wages, safe­ty equip­ment, com­put­ers, of­fice equip­ment, of­fice sup­plies, fu­el, meet­ings, build­ing main­te­nance and mi­nor re­pairs.

The cost of the three ARS ve­hi­cles was not in­clud­ed in this fig­ure. Bharath said hav­ing looked at the of­fi­cers' per­for­mance, it was not en­cour­ag­ing as "the whole sys­tem fell apart be­cause there was no fo­cus". The squad, Bharath said, was faced with sev­er­al im­ped­i­ments, since they had no pow­ers to ar­rest, were not pre­cept­ed and the po­lice was not help­ful in back­up and re­sponse.

To com­pound mat­ters, Bharath said prae­di­al lar­ce­ny mat­ters brought be­fore the court were not dealt with in a time­ly fash­ion. In two weeks' time, Bharath said his min­istry would un­veil a plan to deal with prae­di­al lar­ce­ny. De­scrib­ing the plan as com­pre­hen­sive, Bharath said once im­ple­ment­ed, it would ef­fec­tive­ly re­duce the ex­ist­ing high lev­els of thefts on farms.

For three months, Bharath said he had a sim­i­lar ARS-type pro­pos­al sit­ting on his desk, which would have cost tax­pay­ers $10 mil­lion a year. "I felt the cost was not jus­ti­fied. I be­lieve when you are spend­ing tax­pay­ers' mon­ey you must be ac­count­able. I am not go­ing to have a mys­tery squad like the pre­vi­ous one." Next month, Bharath said, ten­ders will go out to pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms to pro­tect agri­cul­tur­al lands un­der cul­ti­va­tion.

Po­lice posts in the food crop ar­eas

Bharath was un­able to say how many firms will be award­ed con­tracts or the num­ber of of­fi­cers to work on farms, but not­ed that by the end of April, the plan will go in­to ef­fect. "All se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers will be pre­cept­ed, high­ly mo­bile, have pow­ers of ar­rests and a good back­up sys­tem." The of­fi­cers will pro­tect three coun­ties, con­sid­ered food bas­kets, Bharath said, which were yet to be iden­ti­fied.

"We will be putting in po­lice posts in the food crop ar­eas. The min­istry has tak­en a de­ci­sion to in­stall bar­ri­ers at every agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess road." On Tues­day, Bharath said Lea­cock will meet with Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar to look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing prae­di­al lar­ce­ny cas­es heard in court once a week to get the ball rolling.

Was the squad dropped be­cause it was a PNM ini­tia­tive? Bharath re­spond­ed: "Ab­solute­ly not. There is ab­solute­ly no pol­i­tics at play here." Ques­tioned if the ini­tia­tive was a wise idea un­der the PNM, Bharath replied: "Like many of the ideas they had, it was throw­ing mon­ey af­ter things with­out prop­er think­ing and fol­low-up."

Bharath said it was a case of "have mon­ey, will spend." Probed about the ARS head­quar­ters, Bharath said he in­tend­ed to use the build­ing as one of four stor­age fa­cil­i­ties for har­vest­ed crops man­aged by the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. With re­gards to the of­fi­cers be­ing owed gra­tu­ity, Bharath said he was not aware of it, which he in­tend­ed to dis­cuss with Lea­cock.

NF­FA-We will give it a try

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Food­crop Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, Ter­rence Hay­wood, has em­braced Bharath's plan. Last Wednes­day, Hay­wood said stake­hold­ers of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, in­clud­ing the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T, met with a min­istry of­fi­cial in Cen­teno to chart a new way for­ward with prae­di­al lar­ce­ny which has crip­pled farm­ers to no end.

"We are will­ing to give the se­cu­ri­ty firms a try. Hon­est­ly, the squad was not ef­fec­tive in car­ry­ing out their jobs. De­spite their pres­ence, farm­ers were still be­ing tar­get­ed by the crim­i­nal el­e­ments. It's time to try some­thing new." How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the Goat and Sheep Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion and co-or­di­na­tor of the Trinidad Unit­ed Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, Shi­raz Khan, said as far as he knew the squad was ef­fec­tive, since thefts in Carlsen Field, where he has his farm, had de­clined in 2010.

"I am dis­ap­point­ed at the de­ci­sion tak­en by Bharath. Why scrap a squad that worked? The same way this Gov­ern­ment ditched SAUTT is the same way they got rid of the squad. I feel be­trayed." Khan ques­tioned why Bharath took al­most two years to come up with a prae­di­al lar­ce­ny plan, which may not even work. He said prae­di­al lar­ce­ny was a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to ris­ing food in­fla­tion.

On Fri­day, the Cen­tral Bank stat­ed that head­line in­fla­tion, as mea­sured by the 12-month in­crease in the in­dex of re­tail prices, rose to 9.2 per cent in Feb­ru­ary from 6.8 per cent in the pre­vi­ous month. "Who will guard these guards when they come on board?" Khan felt the squad's con­tract was not re­newed be­cause it was a PNM ini­tia­tive. "It was pol­i­tics at play here. There is no doubt about it."

Rame­sar-un­aware of the ARS

Pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Sgt Anand Rame­sar said he was not aware that the ARS had trained un­der the TTPS and even ex­ist­ed. "If I tell you I have nev­er heard about them be­fore. The squad has to band them­selves to­geth­er and make some noise. That is what they need to do."

Rame­sar said he would be will­ing to meet the squad, pro­vid­ing that they have da­ta to show how ef­fec­tive they were. Rame­sar said one must re­mem­ber it was a pi­lot project, which did not guar­an­tee the right to con­tin­ue af­ter an as­sess­ment is made. Rame­sar said if the pro­gramme was ef­fec­tive and stopped that was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. "I can't see the Gov­ern­ment chang­ing it if it worked, un­less it has some po­lit­i­cal thing to it."