Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Funds in­tend­ed for the re­pair of agri­cul­tur­al roads were mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment to un­der­take work in res­i­den­tial ar­eas, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram claims.

Rati­ram made the claim while speak­ing with the me­dia fol­low­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 5,000 Brazil­ian co­conut plants to farm­ers at the min­istry’s Cen­teno Train­ing Cen­tre yes­ter­day.

Rati­ram said, “Com­ing in­to the min­istry, we re­ceived a brief of work that was sup­posed to ben­e­fit farm­ers that was de­signed to­wards re­fur­bish­ment and re­pairs to agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads. You will be sur­prised to know that these projects were ex­e­cut­ed in res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties sep­a­rate and apart to the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty. It is some­thing we are go­ing to speak more about in the up­com­ing mid-year re­view, where we will ex­pose the in­ef­fi­cien­cies and mis­place­ment of pri­or­i­ties and the lost of align­ment of these projects”

He added, “We have to re­align these projects, we have to fill the gaps and en­sure that the re­sources that were ded­i­cat­ed to agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads reach­es there.”

He said T&T will face ris­ing food prices if the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor con­tin­ues to suf­fer.

Rati­ram al­so not­ed that plans by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to shut down the St Au­gus­tine nurs­eries will now be shelved. He said the PNM had in­tend­ed to erect a build­ing un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on land he de­scribed as arable.

On the is­sue of flood­ing, Rati­ram said his min­istry is cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the com­pen­sa­tion farm­ers re­ceive when they ex­pe­ri­ence loss­es. He said, “It is some­thing that is very old and ar­cha­ic and it is some­thing that farm­ers have ex­pressed their frus­tra­tion over the pe­ri­od of time.”

He not­ed that all field of­fi­cers were in the process of col­lect­ing da­ta. The min­istry, he said, will en­sure farm­ers re­ceive the nec­es­sary sup­port to re­cov­er.

“Farm­ers must not feel that they are fight­ing this bat­tle on their own,” Rati­ram said, adding the min­istry is seek­ing the best mod­el of agro-in­sur­ance to help farm­ers bounce back af­ter loss­es.

He em­pha­sised that the min­istry is tak­ing a proac­tive ap­proach to tack­le flood­ing. Many agri­cul­tur­al chan­nels, he said, had been aban­doned and the min­istry will car­ry out pre­ven­ta­tive work in re­sponse.

Ef­forts to con­tact for­mer Agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein for a com­ment on the claims via calls and What­sApp mes­sages were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day. Al­so con­tact­ed, for­mer min­is­ter in the min­istry, Avinash Singh, said he could not com­ment on the claim.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing yes­ter­day, Co­conut Stake­hold­er Plat­form chair­man Philippe Agos­ti­ni de­scribed the ar­rival of the plants as a dream re­alised for the sec­tor.

He ex­plained that cur­rent plan­ta­tions have been suf­fer­ing from the scourge of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny and the red ring dis­ease caused by the South Amer­i­can palm wee­vil. He said the new Brazil­ian va­ri­ety should boost pro­duc­tion three­fold. The new va­ri­ety is ex­pect­ed to ma­ture ear­li­er, yield 500 mil­li­l­itres of wa­ter per nut, and pro­duce 600 nuts per plant an­nu­al­ly. The pro­gramme was fund­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union and over­seen by CAR­DI and farm­ers who took part will re­ceive plants based on the size of their hold­ings.