Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

In a bid to as­sist in solv­ing the labour short­ages in the farm­ing in­dus­try, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has start­ed pro­vid­ing agri-busi­ness train­ing to 1,000 work­ers from the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme. The first batch, com­pris­ing 160 work­ers, will be placed in­to agri­cul­tur­al fields across T&T at the end of June.

Speak­ing at the launch of the Table­land Pineap­ple Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion first an­nu­al fruit fair, held at the Sim­plex Nu Im­age Com­plex, New Grant, yes­ter­day, Bharath said the URP work­ers are be­ing ex­posed to agro­nom­ic prac­tices and agri­cul­tur­al farm­ing. "We are train­ing them to be­come small en­tre­pre­neurs and at the same time as­sist in solv­ing labour prob­lems in the agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­try," Bharath said.

He not­ed that skilled labour was im­por­tant es­pe­cial­ly since gov­ern­ment was at­tempt­ing to re­vive agri­cul­ture. "We will train the URP work­ers to un­der­stand how to go to the ADB (Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank) and get a busi­ness loan. They can be­come en­tre­prenuers in their own right," Bharath said. He not­ed that the URP work­ers, once they en­ter the agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­try, will re­ceive twice their salary.

"A URP work­er earns $69 per day and that can­not buy much. How­ev­er, we will guar­an­tee a wage of $150 per day once they come and work for farm­ers. The farm­ers will get avail­able labour and the min­istry can now put peo­ple back to pro­duc­tive labour," Bharath said.

He not­ed that in the past, many grad­u­ates of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and East­ern Caribbean In­sti­tute of Agri­cul­ture and Forestry (Eci­af) had no op­por­tu­ni­ties af­ter grad­u­a­tion. "We lost them and it is un­for­tu­nate es­pe­cial­ly since the Eci­af grad­u­ates come out with ac­tu­al prac­ti­cal skills and noth­ing for them to do," Bharath said. How­ev­er, he ex­plained that the min­istry will hire 50 grad­u­ates each year and put them in a pro­duc­tive agri­cul­tur­al en­vi­ron­ment.

Bharath al­so called on the pub­lic to eat lo­cal fruits. He said the min­istry want­ed to bring back tra­di­tion­al sta­ples like bread­fruit and chatagne by plant­i­ng 1,000 bread­fruit trees across the coun­try. Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Table­land Pineap­ple Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Ra­mash Ram­sumair called on farm­ers to seize the op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by the min­istry. He said it was time for farm­ers to ed­u­cate them­selves on new agri­cul­tur­al tech­nolo­gies so that they can com­pete.