Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

De­spite re­ports of a poi­son scare on av­o­ca­dos in east Trinidad, ven­dors of the San Fer­nan­do mar­ket yes­ter­day con­tin­ued to sell the fruit to mem­bers of the pub­lic. How­ev­er, on­ly a few peo­ple dared to buy the av­o­ca­dos, af­ter be­ing told that they were sourced from St Vin­cent and Grena­da. One ven­dor, Radi­ka Ar­joon­s­ingh, who has been sell­ing at the mar­ket for the past 28 years, said the scare was un­war­rant­ed. It was re­port­ed on Mon­day that a care­tak­er from an es­tate in Madoo Hill, Tu­na­puna, told po­lice he had in­ject­ed weed­i­cide in­to av­o­ca­dos af­ter the es­tate had ex­pe­ri­enced in­stances of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny.

The man told po­lice that near­ly 2,000 av­o­ca­dos had sub­se­quent­ly been stolen. But Ar­joon­s­ingh said, "Peo­ple over­re­act­ing. This whole thing is stu­pid­ness be­cause right now all of us re­main­ing with all the av­o­ca­dos on our hands. No­body buy­ing. We los­ing mon­ey and things al­ready so hard." She said if the av­o­ca­dos were in­ject­ed with poi­son, the fruit will be­gin to get brown spots. "All my fruits nice and green, yet I didn't sell a sin­gle zabo­ca for the day." She ex­plained that in­ject­ing 2,000 fruits with poi­son would take a long time. "I want to know where he get 2,000 zabo­ca be­cause right now the zabo­ca sea­son al­most at an end," she added.

Bernadette Fras­er, who was al­so sold the fruit, said she pur­chased her fruits from the Cen­tral Mar­ket in Port-of-Spain with the hope of mak­ing a prof­it. Ann Marie Seep­er­sad, who was al­so sell­ing at the mar­ket had a sim­i­lar sto­ry. She al­so said she too had not re­ceived a sin­gle sale. She ex­plained that her goods came from the Ma­coya Mar­ket in Tu­na­puna and were brought in from St Vin­cent. Mean­while, sev­er­al cus­tomers who were in­ter­viewed said they did not want to risk buy­ing any poi­soned fruit. Mar­i­an Gol­lard said the farmer who said he com­mit­ted the act should be pe­nalised. She al­so said that Gov­ern­ment need­ed to ad­dress the prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is­sues which were dri­ving the farm­ers in­to tak­ing dras­tic ac­tion.