SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Nizam Baksh is con­sid­er­ing pro­mot­ing hor­ti­cul­ture as a means of in­come gen­er­a­tion. Baksh said he re­cent­ly vis­it­ed the T&T Or­chid So­ci­ety's (TTOS) first show for 2012 at the San Fer­nan­do Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute in San Fer­nan­do and he was im­pressed by the out­put of lo­cal flower grow­ers. Baksh said peo­ple get­ting in­to the cul­ti­va­tion of or­chids and oth­er or­na­men­tal plants can con­tribute to the econ­o­my and earn an in­come, not on­ly by grow­ing and sell­ing plants but they can al­so look at sup­ply­ing the lo­cal cut-flower mar­ket. He said a read­i­ly avail­able sup­ply of cut flow­ers would re­duce the im­port bill and keep for­eign ex­change at home. He said small grow­ers would be able to sup­ply flower shops in their com­mu­ni­ties. Baksh said his min­istry was will­ing to part­ner with the TTOS to un­der­take train­ing pro­grammes for peo­ple show­ing an in­ter­est in the hor­ti­cul­ture in­dus­try.