SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Gov­ern­ment has com­mis­sioned a $1.8 mil­lion aqua­cul­ture hatch­ery, ex­ten­sion and train­ing fa­cil­i­ty at the Sug­ar Cane Feeds Cen­tre (SFC) in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas.Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, in his ad­dress at the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny, said the aim is to boost an­nu­al pro­duc­tion to 475 tonnes over a five-year pe­ri­od.He said im­port­ed tilapia con­tributes to T&T's food im­port bill.

The hatch­ery will have the ca­pac­i­ty to sup­ply an es­ti­mat­ed 50 per cent of fin­ger­lings need­ed to meet the 2015 na­tion­al tilapia tar­get and re­verse the de­cline in nat­ur­al and farmed sup­plies of cas­cadu­ra.There are plans to ex­pand the hatch­ery by the next fis­cal year to fa­cil­i­tate in­creased breed­ing of the black riv­er conch.Ma­haraj said there is in­creased con­sump­tion of tilapia lo­cal­ly be­cause of a ma­jor in­cen­tive to mar­ket the fish.

In the last six months, the SFC has pur­chased more than five tonnes of tilapia from farm­ers to be processed for lo­cal sale.Based on sta­tis­tics from the SFC, sales have more than dou­bled to an av­er­age of over 1,500 pounds a month.Ma­haraj said Cab­i­net has ap­proved plans for con­struc­tion of a tilapia pro­cess­ing plant at the SFC train­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

He said the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry plans to in­crease lo­cal cas­cadu­ra sup­plies but will keep that in­for­ma­tion pri­vate since the pre­vi­ous ef­forts to re­pop­u­late lo­cal stocks at Ker­na­han, Or­toire, failed be­cause fish­er­men re­moved the cas­cadu­ra fin­ger­lings from the riv­er.Ma­haraj said the state-op­er­at­ed hatch­eries at the SFC will sup­ply pro­vide 1.1 mil­lion fin­ger­lings for this project.

He said there are al­so plans to reg­u­late and man­age nat­ur­al har­vest­ing for the long term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the rur­al mi­cro-in­dus­try to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties which are de­pen­dent on fish­ing.