SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs has ef­fec­tive­ly fired the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) be­cause of the pletho­ra of prob­lems ex­pe­ri­enced with its con­trac­tors. This comes from Sen­a­tor De­vant Ma­haraj, the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter, at the open­ing of the Grande Riv­iere Fish­ing Fa­cil­i­ty at De­pot Road, Grande Riv­iere, last week.

The min­is­ter said he heard the grum­blings of the fish­er­men of Matelot who com­plained that a fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty built by the EM­BD still re­mained closed. Ma­haraj said the min­istry was still wait­ing for the con­trac­tor to hand over the fa­cil­i­ty and pro­duce the rel­e­vant pa­per­work be­fore it could be opened.

He said, "Be­cause of the prob­lem up there and oth­er ar­eas with EM­BD, we are re­vis­it­ing our re­la­tion­ship with EM­BD as a pro­cure­ment agency. In fact, I went to Cab­i­net about three weeks ago ask­ing that Nipdec be the new ex­e­cut­ing agency for the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion.

"Cab­i­net had agreed to that, so now all our new projects would be un­der Nipdec as we dis­tance our­selves from EM­BD." Ma­haraj said he hoped in six weeks time the fish­er­men who suf­fered loss­es in 2011 would re­ceive some mea­sure of com­pen­sa­tion. The fish­er­men told Ma­haraj that they had filed claims but had not yet re­ceived any monies for dam­aged boats and nets. Ma­haraj said when he in­ves­ti­gat­ed he found the pa­per­work sub­mit­ted by the fish­er­men to be in­com­plete.

Ma­haraj ex­plained that the min­istry must have the prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion in place be­fore any mon­ey could be paid out. How­ev­er, he man­dat­ed Chris­tine Chan A Shing, the di­rec­tor of Fish­eries, to ex­pe­dite the mat­ter in six weeks. He said com­pen­sa­tion must be ap­proved by Cab­i­net through a note sub­mit­ted by the min­is­ter. "I am wait­ing with a pen in hand to sign that note."

Ma­haraj said his min­istry would be con­struct­ing a slip­way and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties at Grande Riv­iere.