RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Now that Faris Al-Rawi is no longer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, busi­ness own­ers are hope­ful that the city’s mega projects and lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form will be achieved soon­er.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said now that Al-Rawi is no longer AG, he will have more time to spend in his con­stituen­cy.

“I be­lieve he will be bet­ter able to over­see the com­ple­tion of the San Fer­nan­do wa­ter­front project, the Skin­ner Park up­grade and the com­ple­tion of the Fam­i­ly Court,” Singh said.

He added, “We hope that the projects con­tin­ue even though his po­si­tion has been changed. It could be pos­i­tive for us as he will have more time to ex­e­cute these projects in a time­ly man­ner. He will have more time to spend with us here in the con­stituen­cy to en­sure that these projects are com­plet­ed and al­so to en­sure that San Fer­nan­do gets the at­ten­tion it has been sad­ly lack­ing for decades.”

Con­cern­ing the ap­point­ment of Kaz­im Ho­sein as Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Singh said there were bud­ding hy­dro­pon­ic farm­ers in and around San Fer­nan­do who did not have the cap­i­tal to ex­pand. 

“As a for­mer Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, we hope Min­is­ter Ho­sein’s new fo­cus would be to de­vel­op agri­cul­ture, in­clud­ing hy­dro­pon­ic farm­ing, for peo­ple who do not have land space,” he said.

Cur­rent­ly, farm­ers need to have a spe­cif­ic acreage be­fore they could qual­i­fy for a farmer’s badge which grants ac­cess to sub­si­dies.

“Hy­dro­pon­ics agri­cul­ture should be de­vel­oped, whether it is on the rooftops of com­mer­cial build­ings that can utilise so­lar pow­er and nat­ur­al weath­er pat­terns so we can grow our own stuff and build­ings can be­come self-sus­tain­ing,” he added.

Singh not­ed, “We will want to en­cour­age Min­is­ter Ho­sein to re­view land lease poli­cies and pro­vide sup­port, es­pe­cial­ly to young en­tre­pre­neurs who don’t have cap­i­tal.”

He said the pri­vate sec­tor can process many va­ri­eties of pro­duce and so re­duce the food im­port bill, not­ing that the Moru­ga agro-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty was un­der-utilised.

“UWI has cer­tifi­cates and diplo­mas which ed­u­cate peo­ple on agri­cul­ture and an­i­mal hus­bandry. We had a vi­brant an­i­mal live­stock in­dus­try un­der Ca­roni. We can re­vi­talise the cat­tle in­dus­try. Nes­tle has in­creased dairy prices so if we can in­crease the pro­duc­tion of these items on the out­skirts of the city where there are avail­able acreages, we can mon­e­tise it,” Singh added. 

Con­cern­ing fore­cast­ed fer­tilis­er short­ages, Singh said the fer­tilis­ers ac­count for 75 per cent of pro­duc­tion costs. He said Ho­sein should al­so look at coun­tries that utilise tra­di­tion­al farm­ing meth­ods such as crop ro­ta­tion so that crops can still flour­ish with­out an abun­dance of fer­tilis­ers. 

Mean­while, busi­ness­man Derek Smith said Al-Rawi has per­formed cred­i­bly as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter, so he was op­ti­mistic that he will ex­cel in lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

“He is a grass­roots per­son and he will per­form ex­cel­lent­ly as Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment be­cause lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form needs his ex­per­tise and a lot of the laws need to be put in place for the less for­tu­nate who lives on the street. He will in­ter­act with more peo­ple. It is not a de­mo­tion at all,” Singh said.

He added, “De­cen­tral­is­ing gov­ern­ment in these ar­eas need his ex­pe­ri­ence and his com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. Some­times peo­ple need to be shift­ed around so their ex­per­tise is shared.”

Rather than look at the neg­a­tives, Smith said that peo­ple should fo­cus on the pos­i­tives and re­alise that Al-Rawi’s ex­per­tise was need­ed in oth­er ar­eas.