Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Cepep work­ers in To­ba­go have be­gun tran­si­tion­ing from san­i­ta­tion and land­scap­ing to farm­ing, as the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) seeks to boost agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion on the is­land.

Sec­re­tary of Food Se­cu­ri­ty Wane Clarke re­vealed on Tues­day that some units have al­ready be­gun plant­i­ng crops.

Dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion for fis­cal 2027 on June 15, Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance Petal-Ann Roberts an­nounced that Cepep had been trans­ferred from the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment to the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty.

Roberts said the ob­jec­tive of the THA is to boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while dou­bling agri­cul­ture’s con­tri­bu­tion to gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) from one to two per cent.

The ini­tia­tive has been met with scep­ti­cism by some stake­hold­ers, who be­lieve a com­plete over­haul of the mind­set of Cepep work­ers is need­ed. Cepep work­ers have tra­di­tion­al­ly been tasked with beau­ti­fy­ing parks and main­tain­ing pub­lic spaces.

On the tran­si­tion to farm­ing, Clarke said the process had al­ready be­gun.

“The process has start­ed, and we just start­ed just last week. We did the first piece of plant­i­ng in the back of Mil­shirv. We did some pump­kin. We are go­ing to re­turn in short or­der to do some sweet pota­to.

“As we go across the is­land, we are go­ing to iden­ti­fy cer­tain plots for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es,” he said.

Asked how Cepep work­ers have re­spond­ed to learn­ing new skills, Clarke said not every­one had em­braced the change in their job de­scrip­tion, but they had a choice to make as the pro­gramme moved in a new di­rec­tion.

“In every­thing you do, you will nev­er have 100 per cent (buy-in), but this is the way the gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to go,” he said.

“Strange enough, we are ap­proach­ing In­de­pen­dence (Day), so the work­ers have a choice. They can use their in­de­pen­dence and de­vi­ate, or they can co-op­er­ate with us and let’s go for­ward.”

Clarke de­clined to give a time­line for when all Cepep work­ers would be ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to agri­cul­ture.

Mean­while, he said his di­vi­sion reg­u­lar­ly com­mu­ni­cates with lo­cal farm­ers to dis­cuss crop cy­cles and de­ter­mine what is need­ed on the is­land.

Min­utes ear­li­er, Clarke was one of the speak­ers at the launch of the To­ba­Grow Loan ini­tia­tive, un­veiled by the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the THA.

The sec­re­tary urged stu­dents study­ing agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence in sec­ondary schools to put their knowl­edge in­to prac­tice and ac­cess loans to be­come in­volved in the sec­tor. The loans are avail­able to cit­i­zens aged 18 and over.

Ply­mouth/Black Rock area rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kern Alex­is al­so ex­pressed en­thu­si­asm about the ini­tia­tive, say­ing To­ba­go farm­ers have nev­er lacked am­bi­tion.

He said their biggest stum­bling block has been ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing, but ex­pressed hope that To­ba­Grow can help bridge that gap and im­prove food se­cu­ri­ty on the is­land.