Jesse Ramdeo

Don’t get smart with snails!

That’s the warn­ing from a mem­ber of the Gi­ant African Snail task force as gov­ern­ment sets to roll out its boun­ty sys­tem lat­er this month. Riyadh Mo­hammed said those think­ing of farm­ing the pest to cash in on the pro­gramme may face the brunt of the law.

“Yes, peo­ple may want to farm these snails to earn rev­enue and that’s why our da­ta col­lec­tion meth­ods from the min­istry’s side and even from the coun­try, we have the prop­er sys­tems in place, prop­er forms in place, prop­er mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems in place to en­sure these snails aren’t farmed. What I would like to rec­om­mend is that if found farm­ing these snails to ob­tain rev­enue from the gov­ern­ment you should be fined or even jailed,” he said.

On Mon­day, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture said it will of­fer an in­cen­tive to farm­ers and the wider pub­lic for the cap­ture and de­liv­ery of the pest at des­ig­nat­ed sites.

The boun­ty sys­tem is part of a two-pronged ap­proach by the re­cent­ly re-es­tab­lished task force.

Mo­hammed said: “Some of the is­sues we may en­counter are that peo­ple might get cre­ative in their think­ing and their en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and want to breed these snails, to farm them, to earn rev­enue from these pro­grammes from these gov­ern­ments. An­oth­er is­sue is peo­ple may in­vade oth­er peo­ple’s farm lands or even res­i­den­tial ar­eas or ur­ban ar­eas to col­lect snails to sub­mit to this pro­gramme for re­mu­ner­a­tion.”

He said the ini­tia­tive’s suc­cess hinged on lo­gis­tics, sup­ply chains, time-lines and the readi­ness of in­fra­struc­ture to mit­i­gate de­lays. He added that mea­sures are be­ing put in place to avoid leak­ages and prop­er in­cin­er­a­tors he used to dis­pose of the snails when col­lect­ed.

Mo­hammed, an agri­cul­tur­al con­sul­tant, said the pro­gramme is a step in the right di­rec­tion.

“The hope here is to car­ry down the Gi­ant African Snail’s pop­u­la­tion on every type of land---agri­cul­tur­al, com­mer­cial, res­i­den­tial, in­dus­tri­al---in all parts of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Any­where the snail is found we try to erad­i­cate it and we don’t want to use the chem­i­cal­ly drenched meth­ods be­cause we need to care for the en­vi­ron­ment and peo­ple as well,” he said.

In coun­ty St George West, one of two dis­tricts that will be among the first for the ini­tia­tive’s roll out, res­i­dents of Diego Mar­tin were hope­ful.

Max­ine Portel­lo said it was a very good idea that would com­bat pests which are very preva­lent in the area.

Syl­vaughn Joseph said: “If the rain on­ly driz­zle right now we can’t walk in cer­tain parts of the road, they com­ing out. Up by we it have two big WASA com­mu­ni­ty tanks and they breed­ing be­hind the tanks and the grass and thing, so I sup­port­ing that.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent said the ini­tia­tive will pro­vide an av­enue for those in need of an in­come.

“Peo­ple will try to get a lit­tle mon­ey be­cause peo­ple on the fence so ah man if he hear that it have snail on the block some­where he will go and get them, so it is a form of in­cen­tive,” he said.

The Agri­cul­ture Min­istry is ex­pect­ed to give more de­tails of the ini­tia­tive in the com­ing weeks.