Hav­ing lost thou­sands of dol­lars in crops at the hands of thieves, Williamsville farm­ers are call­ing on Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat to re­vamp the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad.

Farmer Ram­sumair Hanu­man said the squad has not been re­spond­ing to dis­tress calls nor was it pa­trolling farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Say­ing the Co­r­i­al Road farm­ers were es­pe­cial­ly hard hit by lar­ce­ny, Hanu­man said they were hope­ful that Ramb­harat would in­ves­ti­gate and in­ter­vene in their plight.

“From Oc­to­ber to now we have thieves com­ing in here steal­ing cab­bages, bo­di, hot pep­pers and plan­tain. Even the co­conut they steal­ing,” Hanu­man said. He not­ed that even though the farm­ers have camps on the agri­cul­tur­al fields many of them were re­luc­tant to stay on the land be­cause of crime.

“We want the Pre­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad to keep up pa­trols here. We are fed up of los­ing our crops. I have in­vest­ed over $80,000 in fer­til­iz­er and chem­i­cals. It is un­fair for us to con­tin­ue to lose our crops when we work so hard every day,” Hanu­man added.

Along the M2 Ring Road, farmer John Kat­wa­roo said they too were los­ing crops and valu­ables from agri­cul­tur­al camps.

“The ban­dits stole the gal­va­nize and some pieces of steel I had in my camp. They reg­u­lar­ly come and steal my pep­pers, and pi­men­toes,” Kat­wa­roo said.

A source at the Pre­di­al Lar­ce­ny Unit ad­mit­ted that they could not re­spond to in­ci­dents of theft be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient man­pow­er and re­sources.

With on­ly one ve­hi­cle op­er­a­tional, and sev­er­al oth­ers down for re­pairs, the of­fi­cer said the Unit was se­vere­ly un­der­staffed.

“We work on a month to month con­tracts. We have faced cuts in salaries which are al­ways late and we are over­worked. From Oc­to­ber 2016 to present of­fi­cers have been de­nied sick, va­ca­tion and ca­su­al leave,” the source said.

The of­fi­cers who work on 24-hour ro­ta­tions said their salaries are sub­stan­tial­ly low­er than that of their coun­ter­parts in oth­er ar­eas of the TTPS.

“In ad­di­tion, they op­er­ate with a skele­tal staff, af­ter ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent of the hun­dred or so odd of­fi­cers have left the Squad,” the source added.

Say­ing Ramb­harat has been silent as to when gra­tu­ity pay­ments would be made, the of­fi­cers said the Min­istry seems un­able to man­age a po­lice unit.

“In Au­gust 2018, CO­LA and meal al­lowances were tak­en away. The Min­istry recog­nis­es of­fi­cers as con­tract civil­ian staff and not as po­lice of­fi­cers, de­spite the fact that they are sworn mem­bers of the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice and func­tion un­der the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice Act,” the source said.

They al­so com­plained that they are not giv­en any re­mu­ner­a­tion when they per­form an ex­tra du­ty.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter Ramb­harat said high ab­sen­teeism was af­fect­ing the unit.

He said af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice, he com­mis­sioned a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the squad.

“This was un­der­tak­en by the Of­fice of Law En­force­ment. I then set about to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions. I al­so put as a pri­or­i­ty the re­lo­ca­tion of the Head Of­fice from Beetham to El Car­men which is a far more com­fort­able lo­ca­tion, the pro­vi­sion of ad­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion at St Clair and South West Trinidad if re­quired, the im­prove­ment of oth­er of­fice lo­ca­tions in Carlsen Field and Craig­nish, the pri­or­i­ty at­ten­tion to re­pairs to ve­hi­cles used by the Squad,” Ramb­harat said.

He added that the re­al is­sues fac­ing the squad were poor at­ten­dance of some of­fi­cers which can on­ly be de­scribed as chron­ic ab­sen­teeism.

“We face abuse of ve­hi­cles par­tic­u­lar­ly through use for pri­vate pur­pos­es and poor lead­er­ship of the Squad,” Ramb­harat said.

He not­ed that these is­sues are un­der the purview of the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the min­istry and are cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.