RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Wood­land farm­ers are en­dur­ing sleep­less nights as they grap­ple with theft of their live­stock by cat­tle rustlers who op­er­ate un­der the cloak of dark­ness.

To date, three farm­ers have re­port­ed in­ci­dents of theft.

One of these thieves, sus­pect­ed to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the on­go­ing re­pairs of the breached riv­er bank, was al­leged­ly caught and even left be­hind a cel­lu­lar phone as he fled through the fields two Sun­days ago.

How­ev­er, de­spite the farm­ers’ ef­forts in re­triev­ing the sus­pect’s phone and re­port­ing the in­ci­dent to the po­lice, the con­trac­tor re­spon­si­ble for the re­pair work, and the Min­istry of Works, they say jus­tice re­mains frus­trat­ing­ly out of reach.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Pha­goo Dan and his son, Nan­deo Dan, res­i­dents of Ra­hamut Trace, said they have lost four cows over the past month.

The el­der­ly Dan said: “I feel sick. Some­times you don’t know what to do. You get frus­trat­ed be­cause you can­not eat your own food. When you get up, you’re wor­ried. It is not easy to wake up and see two or three cat­tle miss­ing.”

He said cat­tle rear­ing is de­mand­ing and labour-in­ten­sive.

“You have to feed them, give them wa­ter, milk them. It’s not easy, but peo­ple are com­ing and steal­ing them.”

Dan said the rustlers pri­mar­i­ly tar­get younger cows be­cause they are eas­i­er to cap­ture and trans­port.

He claimed that the po­lice re­sponse was poor.

The 65-year-old farmer said: “I try my best to do what is good, but in this mat­ter, I am get­ting no re­sponse from any­body. No help from any­body. No­body re­spond­ing to us. I don’t know why the po­lice are not tak­ing this mat­ter se­ri­ous­ly.”

With on­ly 15 cows re­main­ing, Dan said he had tak­en it up­on him­self to stay up every night to watch over his an­i­mals.

“I lost an an­i­mal at 2.30 pm. In broad day­light, they took the cow from the pas­tures,” he re­count­ed.

While the po­lice have con­firmed on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the thefts, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan de­nied any con­nec­tion be­tween the con­trac­tor and his Min­istry.

Sinanan em­pha­sised that cat­tle theft was a mat­ter for the po­lice to ad­dress and, while ex­press­ing sym­pa­thy for the af­fect­ed farm­ers, in­di­cat­ed that the Min­istry could not be­come di­rect­ly in­volved in re­solv­ing the is­sue.