Michelle Loubon

Farm­ers want Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj to cre­ate more, com­fort­able work­ing con­di­tions for them at the Nor­ris De­onar­ine North­ern Whole­sale Mar­ket in Ma­coya, Ter­rance Hay­wood, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Food Crop Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, said on Sat­ur­day.Hay­wood was speak­ing at a memo­r­i­al ser­vice and un­veil­ing of a por­trait in ho­n­our of De­onar­ine, who was a famers' ac­tivist and ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer with the as­so­ci­a­tion. De­onar­ine died on Feb­ru­ary 18, 2011.

"We want more ex­ten­sion to the site be­cause peo­ple are sell­ing out in the rain and in the sun. The site is all right but they are tak­ing too long to get in," he said."We talked to Ma­haraj about prob­lems like block­ing of the road. We want farm­ers to be more com­fort­able. We just want him to cov­er the open spaces. Let­tuce ven­dors com­plain about their pro­duce wilt­ing in the sun.

"Peo­ple from all over come here be­cause of its cen­tral lo­ca­tion. We asked Ma­haraj to take over the lands on the north­ern side be­cause it was in the plan for a long time. If they buy the lands and ex­pand the mar­ket it would help a lot." Hay­wood said on Thurs­day there is chaos at the fa­cil­i­ty with about 4,000 farm­ers com­pet­ing for 94 spaces.

Sat­ur­day's memo­r­i­al was at­tend­ed by Priya Ganess-Nan­ton, See­ta Mo­hammed, ac­tivist Mer­le Hodge, at­tor­ney Vashist Ma­haraj and farmer Garvin Thomas. Ma­haraj said farm­ers were de­nied se­cu­ri­ty of tenure by the Gov­ern­ment."Fifty-six per cent of the land is owned by the State. The de­nial is in­tend­ed to keep farm­ers in pover­ty," he said.

Asked how he felt about his broth­er's lega­cy, Farouk De­onar­ine said: "I am touched by the por­trait. He was an ex­cep­tion­al ac­tivist for farm­ers. He was a great man."