Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Ravi Rati­ram, says the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion took out a loan for $200 mil­lion “just be­fore elec­tion” to build ac­cess roads for farm­ers across the coun­try. How­ev­er, he said sev­er­al of the roads which were built were in places where there are no farm­ers.

Rati­ram made the rev­e­la­tion as he held a farm­ers’ meet­ing on Wednes­day af­ter­noon in Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la along with MP for the area Shiv­an­na Sam.

Rati­ram said, “When we went in­to the min­istry, we met in­voic­es, we met bills, ac­cu­mu­lat­ed to about $21 mil­lion so we said let us look what these in­voic­es are for be­cause farm­ers con­tin­ue to com­plain of ac­cess roads. You know that sev­er­al of these works that took place were in places where there are no farm­ers. The pic­tures that were placed on the screen on the pre­sen­ta­tion was box drains next to some­body’s house, so mil­lions of dol­lars that should have gone to­wards agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads.”

He has vowed to make a re­port pub­lic “once a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete of what tran­spired.”

While for­mer Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Kaz­im Ho­sein, could not be reached for com­ment, a source who worked un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion con­firmed the loan was tak­en out. How­ev­er, they said no mon­ey was ever used, as for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young was adamant such ex­pen­di­ture shouldn’t take place right be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion. A doc­u­ment ob­tained showed Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (PSAEL) was the State agency that the mon­ey was al­lo­cat­ed to. Guardian Me­dia reached out to Young but re­ceived no re­sponse.

For­mer PSAEL chair­man Ju­nia Re­grel­lo was al­so adamant that “the mon­ey was not touched.” He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the log­ic be­hind the project was based on work that had to be done be­fore the start of the wet sea­son.

He added, “When the elec­tion was called, that mon­ey was nev­er touched, no projects came for­ward, no projects were iden­ti­fied.”

Rati­ram claimed, “A lot of mad­ness was hap­pen­ing with­in the min­istry and with­in the agen­cies as­so­ci­at­ed to the min­istry. We can­not con­tin­ue along that vein... If we take a loan for $200 mil­lion or if we have mon­ey with­in an agency that is to be al­lo­cat­ed for agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads the farm­ers must ben­e­fit from that pro­gramme.”

There was al­so a call for farm­ers to be giv­en shot­gun li­cences as a means of pro­tect­ing them­selves and their crops from prae­di­al lar­ce­ny.

One farmer said, “We don’t want to kill any­body but a shot in the air would cause a man to think twice about com­ing back be­cause it doesn’t stop at one. These fel­las, they don’t just take, they de­stroy. They don’t care about how much work you put in, how much time you have stayed away from your fam­i­ly, and the mon­ey you have spent. The prae­di­al lar­ce­ny squad can­not po­lice them on a needs-time ba­sis.”