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Monday, July 14, 2025

Los Iros farmers salvage crops following collapse of access road

by

13 days ago
20250701

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

As Los Iros farm­ers await as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment, they con­tin­ued to try to sal­vage and har­vest their crops yes­ter­day, de­spite a mas­sive land move­ment that has cut off ve­hi­cle ac­cess to their gar­dens.

Kishore Ra­goo­bar spent most of the day mak­ing two-mile trips back and forth from his gar­den off Roy­al En­gi­neer­ing Road, com­mon­ly called RE Road, to get his toma­toes to the mar­kets and cus­tomers in Debe, Pe­nal and Bar­rack­pore.

He is among 35 farm­ers af­fect­ed af­ter gap­ing cracks de­vel­oped on the land last Fri­day, caus­ing sec­tions to rise and sink. In one area, the road broke off and shift­ed more than 50 feet, dam­ag­ing their farms, crops, ponds, and pack­ing and pro­cess­ing sheds.

When Guardian Me­dia called Ra­goo­bar around 4 pm yes­ter­day, he was still in his gar­den, har­vest­ing his toma­toes.

“It re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard,” lament­ed Ra­goo­bar, who sound­ed out of breath.

“Is an acre of toma­toes I am har­vest­ing. So is thou­sands of pounds of toma­toes we car­ry­ing out in cro­cus bags.”

He said they were us­ing wheel­bar­rows for part of the way but had to car­ry the bags by hand through ar­eas where wheel­bar­rows could not pass.

The dis­tance to his gar­den one way is two miles. He said he had to hire two oth­er work­ers, each of whom car­ried about eight cro­cus bags, pay­ing them $150 to $200 per trip.

Ra­goo­bar com­plained that the land was still mov­ing, but most­ly in the night. Pleased that act­ing Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein and La Brea MP Clyde El­der vis­it­ed on Sun­day, met with them and toured the af­fect­ed area, Ra­goo­bar said he was hop­ing that they would get re­lief soon.

While some farm­ers sug­gest­ed re­lo­ca­tion, as it was not the first time they were ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed by land move­ment in the area, Ra­goo­bar said he pre­ferred to stay on his land.

He sug­gest­ed the use of an al­ter­na­tive route but said the Gov­ern­ment would first have to re­pair a bridge on that road.

Mean­while, An­gus Prince, a su­per­vi­sor at the Erin Bouffe Mud Vol­cano, said “it is im­pos­si­ble” to ac­cess the vol­cano park, which is a pop­u­lar tourist at­trac­tion. Se­nior ge­ol­o­gist Xavier Moo­nan, who vis­it­ed the site on Sun­day, said the de­struc­tion was a re­sult of the move­ment of the fault line, sim­i­lar to what had oc­curred in 2018 af­ter a ma­jor earth­quake. He opined that the move­ment would con­tin­ue, re­sult­ing in fur­ther dam­age.

Speak­ing with re­porters on Sun­day, Ho­sein said the pur­pose of their vis­it was to as­sess the dam­age, speak with farm­ers and find so­lu­tions to the is­sues. He said, “This is part of our na­tion’s food bas­ket, and we have to take care of these farm­ers. We have to treat them with the re­spect that they de­serve.”

Not­ing that he was from the area, El­der said he was aware of land move­ment is­sues and would as­sist in the best way pos­si­ble, in­clud­ing short, medi­um and long-term mea­sures.

Point­ing out that what had hap­pened was an act of God, he said there were some things they would not be able to do, but he as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment would as­sist where it could.

“The dif­fer­ence be­tween 2018 and now, while the sit­u­a­tion may be worse than it was, the re­sponse from the gov­ern­ment is go­ing to be much dif­fer­ent than it was in 2018,” he as­sured.

The farm­ers com­plained that they re­ceived no com­pen­sa­tion from the gov­ern­ment when they suf­fered loss­es in 2018.


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