RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram says farm­ers and cit­i­zens will soon be “smil­ing” when the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get is pre­sent­ed, with one of its high­lights be­ing a new cas­sa­va pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty at Dum­fries, La Ro­main.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter an agri­cul­ture ini­tia­tive at Cara Suites yes­ter­day, Rati­ram said the 2024/2025 Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed in ear­ly Oc­to­ber.

“This cas­sa­va pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty is an ex­cit­ing project that the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture is mov­ing swift­ly with,” Rati­ram said. “It will not on­ly han­dle cas­sa­va but oth­er pro­vi­sions and will in­clude a pro­cess­ing line for fruits and pack­ag­ing for veg­eta­bles.”

The fa­cil­i­ty, to be built on land op­po­site the Namde­v­co mar­ket, will buy cas­sa­va from farm­ers in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties and process it in­to cas­sa­va flour for lo­cal con­sump­tion and re­gion­al ex­port.

“We will be in­tro­duc­ing cas­sa­va flour not just for us here lo­cal­ly but al­so re­gion­al­ly to con­tin­ue to boost our ex­por­ta­tion of agri­cul­ture,” he said. “At the min­istry, we are work­ing ag­gres­sive­ly to in­tro­duce agro-pro­cess­ing tech­niques and tech­nol­o­gy to add val­ue to the prod­ucts our farm­ers bring to the ta­ble.”

Rati­ram said the project will form part of Gov­ern­ment’s bil­lion-dol­lar agri­cul­tur­al ex­port man­date and will be bud­get­ed for this fis­cal year. “Well, I will be smil­ing, the coun­try will be smil­ing, every­one will be smil­ing,” he said.

On the is­sue of pre­di­al lar­ce­ny, Rati­ram said when he took of­fice, there were no func­tion­al ve­hi­cles.

“I am hap­py to re­port that we have been able to move around the nec­es­sary funds to en­sure that every sta­tion has one work­ing ve­hi­cle. As of this morn­ing, I can safe­ly say we have func­tion­al ve­hi­cles at the Pre­di­al Lar­ce­ny Unit,” he said.

He added that the min­istry is ex­pand­ing the unit by fill­ing va­cant po­si­tions and in­te­grat­ing it with the Forestry Di­vi­sion. Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice are al­so be­ing de­ployed to sup­port pa­trols in farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties such as Princes Town, Pe­nal, and Debe.

On the Bat Trap­ping Unit, Rati­ram said it was op­er­a­tional but ham­pered by staffing and fund­ing chal­lenges. “We ba­si­cal­ly met the min­istry in a mess … but we have been work­ing to­wards get­ting it up and run­ning,” he said. Over­time is be­ing man­aged more tight­ly by as­sign­ing spe­cif­ic tasks to spe­cif­ic of­fi­cers with­in set time­lines.

He ad­mit­ted staffing short­ages have strained the unit but praised min­istry staff for their ded­i­ca­tion de­spite lim­it­ed re­sources.

While care­ful not to re­veal too much ahead of the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Rati­ram promised cit­i­zens would be pleased.

“I’m sure there are a lot of good­ies that are go­ing to be com­ing … a lot of in­no­v­a­tive, rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing projects,” he said. “But I don’t want to say too much more. I want to leave that for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to share with the coun­try.”

Farm­ers want big­ger al­lo­ca­tion

Mean­while, farm­ers ex­pressed hope that more than $1 bil­lion would be al­lo­cat­ed to agri­cul­ture, a sec­tor that tra­di­tion­al­ly re­ceives one of the small­est shares of the bud­get.

Farmer Ram­sumair Hanu­man said pre­di­al lar­ce­ny re­mains a ma­jor prob­lem, while Unit­ed Farm­ers Union pres­i­dent Shi­raz Khan called for agri­cul­ture to be pri­ori­tised. He said live­stock farm­ers in Per­se­ver­ance are fac­ing heavy loss­es be­cause of theft.