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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Plum Mitan farmers bracing for floods, agri challenges

by

Charles Kong Soo
1142 days ago
20220529
Non-functioning pumps at the two pump stations in Plum Mitan.

Non-functioning pumps at the two pump stations in Plum Mitan.

Charles Kong Soo

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced in the 2021/2022 Bud­get that $1.249 bil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries, with a $300 mil­lion stim­u­lus pack­age as well as a pro­posed $75 mil­lion project to de­vel­op farm­ing ac­cess roads in var­i­ous farm­ing ar­eas through­out Trinidad.

An es­ti­mat­ed $11 mil­lion has al­so been com­mit­ted for the re­place­ment in 2022 of the decades-old pumps as well as ac­cess road re­pairs in the Plum Mi­tan area.

As T&T is in the rainy sea­son, Plum Mi­tan farm­ers are brac­ing for the very re­al threat of hav­ing their crops de­stroyed by flood­wa­ters as oc­curred last year in Au­gust 2021 and years past.

Of the six pumps lo­cat­ed at the two pump sta­tions, on­ly one re­fur­bished pump is op­er­a­tional.

Plum Mi­tan farm­ers have a litany of agri­cul­tur­al chal­lenges be­sides flood­ing. Land tenure is a peren­ni­al is­sue, while the Cal­too Road bridge that farm­ers and res­i­dents use to trans­port pro­duce out of the Plum Mi­tan La­goon is crum­bling. Riv­er cours­es are choked with lily pads and re­quire long-over­due dredg­ing and de­silt­ing. They are al­so faced with de­plorable ac­cess roads, lack of wa­ter for ir­ri­ga­tion dur­ing the dry sea­son, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny and pests and dis­eases at­tack­ing live­stock and crops.

The most­ly dirt roads filled with pot­holes were so rough in the area that even a trac­tor tra­vers­ing Wade Road lost its cov­er pan­el.

Some of the roads were filled with fist-sized CRC stones or fin­er petron crushed stones al­leged­ly by a con­trac­tor hired by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT).

While be­ing shown around the area by farmer Ku­mar Sa­roop on May 18, in his ca­pa­ble 4x4 pick­up, even at a low speed we were bounced around and jolt­ed in the cab­in due to the ad­verse con­di­tion of the road.

A MOWT ex­ca­va­tor which was ini­tial­ly used to dredge the riv­er now lay aban­doned and sunken in the mid­dle of the Ja­gru­ma Riv­er, con­tribut­ing to the block­age of the riv­er flow.

Potholes in an access road in Plum Mitan.

Potholes in an access road in Plum Mitan.

Charles Kong Soo

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, Sa­roop, who plants cu­cum­bers, pump­kin, toma­toes and co­conuts on his Road 9, Block 2 farm said "That MOWT crane that sink in the riv­er clog­ging it should be called a sub­ma­rine and is caus­ing a big prob­lem. I feel if they call the scrap iron deal­ers they would faster come and take it out than MOWT.

"The pump shed is cav­ing down, some pumps break­ing down and we get flood out.

"They promised new pumps, the rainy sea­son start­ed on May 16 and some of us still haven't got­ten com­pen­sa­tion for los­ing our crops from years ago."

He sug­gest­ed that farm­ers re­ceive a sub­sidy for gaso­line and diesel to pow­er the emer­gency pumps to drain wa­ter from their fields as they were ex­pen­sive.

Sa­roop said MOWT fixed four km of road and dam­aged two 24 km roads in the process.

Ac­cord­ing to Sa­roop, in­stead of fix­ing the roads in the in­te­ri­or of the la­goon first, they did the re­verse and dam­aged the roads with the big trucks.

He opined that he had an is­sue with the Gov­ern­ment spend­ing mon­ey in Plum Mi­tan but that farm­ers were not get­ting val­ue for mon­ey but shod­dy work.

Roooplal Ram­nanan, whose son has five acres of land at Road #17 Block 4 un­der cul­ti­va­tion with wa­ter­mel­on, can­taloupe and co­conuts said with­out prop­er func­tion­ing wa­ter pumps, one driz­zle of rain could be "pres­sure" re­sult­ing in flood­ing.

He said iron­i­cal­ly they were al­so not get­ting a prop­er wa­ter sup­ply, some farm­ers on the bound­ary were al­so clos­ing sluice gates and they were get­ting flood­ed out.

A MOWT excavator abandoned  in the Jagruma River in Plum Mitan.

A MOWT excavator abandoned in the Jagruma River in Plum Mitan.

Charles Kong Soo

Ram­nanan said that some farm­ers were re­luc­tant to re­plant as they were still wait­ing on their flood re­lief grants.

Carl­ton Bis­soon, a wa­ter­mel­on farmer at Road 15, Block 3 is im­plor­ing MOWT to fix the roads. As he doesn't have a SUV or pick­up, his car's un­der­bel­ly was caked in mud and de­bris and fre­quent­ly got stuck in the wa­ter-filled pot­holes.

Farmer Har­ry Gopaul re­vealed that there was a long reach ex­ca­va­tor that as­sist­ed in de­silt­ing the riv­er cours­es in Plum Mi­tan two years ago but it was re­lo­cat­ed to Long­denville on an­oth­er project and was nev­er re­turned.

He al­so wants to ask the new Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter, Kaz­im Ho­sein, where is the lo­ca­tion of a new un­used al­most $1.5 m ex­ca­va­tor with an ex­pired war­ran­ty.

Gopaul said that for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat had promised two years ago that he would al­so re­place the six drainage pumps and one ir­ri­ga­tion pump that were past their ex­pi­ra­tion, the de­silt­ing of 30 km of drainage chan­nels and the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of ac­cess roads through­out the area.

He added that Ramb­harat was go­ing to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to get as­sis­tance to re­pair the di­lap­i­dat­ed Cal­too Road bridge. This nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

Gopaul stat­ed that many farm­ers lost their crops last year ex­pe­ri­enc­ing heavy loss­es and were un­will­ing to re­plant un­til the pumps were re­placed, as Plum Mi­tan was a low ly­ing swampy area that re­lied main­ly on pumps for drainage.

He said com­pound­ing the prob­lem for farm­ers was that the agri­cul­ture min­istry did not pro­vide diesel or gaso­line fu­el to op­er­ate the ob­so­lete pumps and many farm­ers aban­doned lands for this rea­son.

No re­sponse from Sinanan, Ho­sein

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein did not re­ply to Sun­day Guardian's What­sApp mes­sages.

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