Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat says Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­ers who fall un­der his min­istry will be utilised in de­fined ar­eas to sup­port the na­tion's farm­ers.

Speak­ing to the GML En­ter­prise Desk on the role of his Min­istry in light of the Prime Min­is­ter's ad­dress to the na­tion on the state of the econ­o­my, Min­is­ter Ramb­harat said he was look­ing at "restart­ing the Mon Jaloux Grass Project, to grow grass for farm­ers across the coun­try."

He said where there was a par­tic­u­lar need from farm­ers and CEPEP and URP work­ers can as­sist then he would utilise them but "it has to be a de­fined project, that would be the state's con­tri­bu­tion to sup­port farm­ers."

In ad­di­tion he said CEPEP work­ers can be utilised pro­duc­tive­ly along the 17 miles of coast­line in Ma­yaro "which we have to clean on a dai­ly ba­sis."

He said they can't "sim­ply take a CEPEP group and put them in­to agri­cul­ture. The peo­ple who will be re­cruit­ed to work in agri­cul­ture are those with the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to do the work re­quired."

In his ad­dress to the na­tion on Tues­day the Prime Min­is­ter said that CEPEP and URP cost the coun­try $1b an­nu­al­ly, but he said he would not cut the pro­grammes, but would in­stead move to "elim­i­nate cor­rup­tion and make those pro­grammes more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive."

Ramb­harat said, "CEPEP func­tions in a lim­it­ed scope they may do some­thing on the road, but they can't do mi­nor road main­te­nance. We have to widen the scope and give them ad­di­tion­al re­sources to do more on site."

He told the GML En­ter­prise Desk that on Tues­day both he and Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon toured the Arawak Poul­try Plant. The com­pa­ny has 1,600 em­ploy­ees but re­quire more work­ers. He said the com­pa­ny pays be­tween "$16 to $22 dol­lars an hour, and a lot of women are em­ployed at the plant, but they need more work­ers."

There is, he said, em­ploy­ment out­side of CEPEP.

In an ef­fort to meet the de­mands of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, he said, his min­istry plans to re­vamp Youth Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme in Agri­cul­ture (YA­PA) and Agri­cul­ture Now –the two pro­grammes for young peo­ple to train them in a wide range of skills to make them em­ploy­able on pri­vate farms. We see the op­por­tu­ni­ty for a two-year ap­pren­tice­ship for them to learn skills to pre­pare them for jobs in­side and out­side the min­istry," he said.

As to the age old cry to "buy lo­cal" well Ramb­harat said "we are do­ing the re­search and my ap­proach to it is to iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties for im­port sub­sti­tu­tion and to de­vel­op some sec­tors."

He said "we have to de­vel­op the lo­cal prod­uct not just to grow hot pep­pers, it has to be a lot more struc­tured ap­proach, tim­ing, pack­ag­ing, a wide range of is­sues." Ramb­harat said he has put "this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in­to the hands of the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Co (NAMDE­V­CO) which is now head­ed by Den­nis Ramdeen." He said "we have the farms to ta­ble con­cept mov­ing the food from farm to ta­ble re­duc­ing the mid­dle­men."

But he has some on­go­ing con­cerns about the sec­tor, these in­clude the han­dling and la­belling of food. Is­sues which he said he in­tends to ad­dress. He told us "in live­stock we have food fraud, that is food which is im­port­ed in a way that it should not be. Chick­en that comes in­to the coun­try we don't know how long it was frozen. In the US af­ter 180 days the chick­en must come off the shelf, we be­lieve it is dumped in T&T." He al­so be­lieves im­port­ed pork which com­petes with the lo­cal pig farm­ers in Waller­field and Carlsen Field "gets here in breach of con­di­tions un­der which it is im­port­ed."

He said "we have to lev­el the play­ing field to make sure the lo­cal in­dus­try has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete fair­ly with im­port­ed food. We have tak­en a hard line es­pe­cial­ly on the im­ports, we have re­vis­it­ed im­port of duck meat from Suri­name be­cause we not sat­is­fied with the pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties in Suri­name."

Ramb­harat said both he and the Min­is­ter of Trade in­tend to meet with the Min­is­ter of Health to en­sure that the Food and Drug Di­vi­sion en­forces the law on im­por­ta­tion of meat and oth­er prod­ucts. He said "it is il­le­gal to im­port hon­ey but yet all the su­per­mar­kets have for­eign hon­ey for sale."

He al­so wants to meet with the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter to dis­cuss the school feed­ing pro­gramme, be­cause "we have an­nounced that we must ap­proach 100 per cent lo­cal foods in the school feed­ing pro­gramme." The lo­cal con­tent in lunch box­es un­der the pro­gramme he said is cur­rent­ly "neg­li­gi­ble, it is a lot of im­port­ed stuff."