Sascha Wil­son

and Kellyann Lemessy 

Frus­trat­ed and wor­ried as their crops con­tin­ue to be de­stroyed and eat­en by gov­ern­ment-owned buf­fa­lyp­soes, farm­ers of the Rio Claro Food Crop Project are again plead­ing for help and com­pen­sa­tion.

They have been joined by vil­lagers who have al­so lost crops and are be­ing ter­rorised by the an­i­mals which have been roam­ing their prop­er­ties and the com­mu­ni­ty of Guayagua­yare Road for months.

The an­i­mals be­long to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries’ Mo­ra Val­ley Farm, the largest buf­fa­lyp­so herd in the coun­try.  

Vil­lagers and farm­ers claim the farm has been un­der­manned and un­der-re­sourced for years and the an­i­mals are not be­ing fed.

De­spite a re­lease by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture on April 17 as­sur­ing that the sit­u­a­tion would be ad­dressed, dis­grun­tled farm­ers and res­i­dents claimed they got no as­sis­tance.

They said thou­sands of dol­lars worth of crops, in­clud­ing cas­sa­va, co­conut, plan­tain and cit­rus have been ei­ther de­stroyed or eat­en. One res­i­dent was forced to re­lo­cate his wife and chil­dren for their safe­ty.

Rio Claro Food Crop Project farmer Toolsie Lal plead­ed, “We call­ing on some form of help. Help us please to get rid of these an­i­mals from our gar­den be­cause they are liv­ing in it now.”

With the rainy sea­son ap­proach­ing, he be­lieves that the sit­u­a­tion will wors­en.

“The scent is very un­bear­able,” he said.

“They are very dan­ger­ous. These an­i­mals when you see them in your place you can’t run them. These things charg­ing at you,” he com­plained. 

Re­quest­ing com­pen­sa­tion, Lal ex­plained, “We have loans to pay. We have fam­i­lies to mind. We have chil­dren to send to school. We call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to please com­pen­sate us. Help us for the time be­ing while you all get this thing un­der con­trol.”

An­oth­er farmer said their crops not on­ly put mon­ey in their pock­ets but fed the na­tion. 

“Is thief we deal­ing with, in­crease in chem­i­cals, the labour force in­crease and now we have to deal with bi­son from the Gov­ern­ment farm com­ing to de­stroy our crops and we have no com­pen­sa­tion. We have noth­ing to get. What are you leav­ing for farm­ers to do out here?” he said.

Vil­lager Ramb­harose Seer­at­tan said the Mo­ra Val­ley Farm has hun­dreds of buf­fa­lyp­soes with just a hand­ful of work­ers.

“This is a food project area that the Gov­ern­ment leased for the peo­ple and these peo­ple sup­port the coun­try with thou­sands of pounds of goods to feed the na­tion and to­day when get dam­age they say no com­pen­sa­tion,” he lament­ed.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the min­istry but no re­sponse was forth­com­ing last evening.  

In the re­lease last month, Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein ex­pressed deep con­cern over the sit­u­a­tion, as­sured a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched in­to the op­er­a­tions at the Mo­ra Val­ley Farm, and in­di­cat­ed that de­ci­sive steps were tak­en to ad­dress the com­mu­ni­ty’s im­me­di­ate needs.   

The Min­istry stat­ed that its key re­sponse in­clud­ed the de­ploy­ment of re­gion­al of­fi­cers to ful­ly as­sess the ex­tent of crop dam­age and eval­u­ate the over­all im­pact on lo­cal farm­ers and im­me­di­ate re­pairs to the fenc­ing around the farm to se­cure the area.