Yvonne Ba­boolal

Aranguez farm­ers, protest­ing the clog­ging of a ma­jor wa­ter­way dur­ing the clear­ing of lands for the con­struc­tion of the $166.6 mil­lion Aranguez fly­over, got a new year gift from Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Arnold Pig­gott yes­ter­day. Agri­cul­ture Min­istry of­fi­cials, man­dat­ed by Pig­gott, met with the farm­ers and told them: "Aranguez is one of our prime pro­duc­ing ar­eas and we would want to min­imise the ad­verse ef­fects from this de­vel­op­ment (Aranguez fly­over project)." Farm­ers were promised the wa­ter­way would be cleared and flow­ing with wa­ter soon. More than 30 farm­ers south of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way in Aranguez, who de­pend­ed on the wa­ter­way com­ing from the Aranguez Riv­er to ir­ri­gate their fields, be­gan protest ac­tion on Mon­day over the clog­ging of the chan­nel by con­trac­tors clear­ing the land for the new fly­over.

Wor­ried farm­ers said the dry sea­son was here and with­out the wa­ter­way, their crops would die. Chief Agri­cul­tur­al Tech­ni­cal Co-or­di­na­tor from the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry, Patrick Cam­bridge, ac­com­pa­nied by a team of oth­er high-pow­ered of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Pig­gott's ad­vis­er, An­tho­ny Bartholomew, met with farm­ers at the wa­ter­way site in South Aranguez at mid­day yes­ter­day to an­nounce good news. With the noise of a back­hoe be­gin­ning work in the back­ground, Cam­bridge ad­dressed a small group of farm­ers in the dusty track. "The year 2009 has been a good one for the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and the min­is­ter didn't wish to end the year on a bad note," he said. Not­ing that Pig­gott had to be in the Sen­ate that af­ter­noon, he added: "The min­is­ter man­dat­ed se­nior min­istry of­fi­cials to be here this morn­ing (yes­ter­day)...Our of­fi­cers would have been out in the field from yes­ter­day recog­nis­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

"We spoke to of­fi­cials from the con­tract­ing com­pa­ny and it seems like­ly wa­ter will be flow­ing here very soon," he said. Asked if the eight farm­ers who were dis­placed be­cause of the fly­over project would be re­lo­cat­ed, Cam­bridge seemed some­what un­cer­tain. "I will not wish to state where they will be re­lo­cat­ed," he said. "Land is a scarce com­mod­i­ty...There is a great de­mand for land. "But the Aranguez farm­ers are ex­pe­ri­enced, and when their land is eval­u­at­ed, I'm sure they will be giv­en pri­or­i­ty." Asked if he thought the dis­place­ment of the farm­ers would af­fect food prices, Cam­bridge said he didn't have a crys­tal ball (to pre­dict). But, he added: "We have been blessed with good weath­er this year and I'm hop­ing oth­er ar­eas will com­pen­sate for the acreage lost to the con­struc­tion of the fly­over."

Farm­ers re­spond

Na­tion­al Food Crop Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NF­FA) re­search of­fi­cer, Nor­ris De­onar­ine, said the as­so­ci­a­tion con­tact­ed the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry on Tues­day about the clogged wa­ter­way and they re­spond­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. "We told them we need im­me­di­ate and ur­gent ac­tion, that farm­ers could not wait two or three days again," he said. "We un­der­stand that Pig­gott him­self di­rect­ed se­nior of­fi­cials to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. "By to­day, farm­ers should see wa­ter flow­ing again. Al­ready, a back­hoe is work­ing on it." Farmer Mukesh Ram­per­sad thanked Pig­gott for the prompt re­sponse to their plight. "I think things could on­ly go well from here," he said. "We seem to be fos­ter­ing a bet­ter work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Gov­ern­ment, some­thing we nev­er had. "We're get­ting some­where, I think."