The hor­ri­fy­ing front page news sto­ries about the bull­doz­ing of valu­able crops of sweet pota­toes, cas­sa­va, pump­kin and bo­di val­ued at many thou­sands of dol­lars is a trag­ic event that has re­vealed shades of the PNM. One would re­call some years ago when, in St Joseph, the then PNM Gov­ern­ment moved in on lands where ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 mil­lion in toma­toes crops were de­stroyed to make way for high-rise, low-in­come hous­ing. The then UNC Op­po­si­tion called down fire and brim­stone, de­scrib­ing the event as a tragedy. Where now is the fire and brim­stone and who is re­spon­si­ble for this rep­re­hen­si­ble in­ci­dent?

Is it the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing? Is it the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture? Is it the Min­is­ter of Sports who is the MP for D'Abadie/Omera? Is it the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ing Cor­po­ra­tion? The per­son or group of peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for this must be made to an­swer and pay the ul­ti­mate price of be­ing stripped of what­ev­er au­thor­i­ty they used to de­stroy food. My rea­son for say­ing that this in­ci­dent is in keep­ing with the be­hav­iour of the PNM is be­cause the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment has seemed in­ca­pable of bring­ing for­ward the most tal­ent­ed in their sup­port, by con­tin­u­ous­ly leav­ing and reap­point­ing for­mer high-rank­ing PNM sup­port­ers and of­fi­cials to key po­si­tions in the gov­ern­ment ser­vice.

What re­al­ly is go­ing on in this coun­try? The Gov­ern­ment must give hon­est an­swers about the sit­u­a­tion and who­ev­er is re­spon­si­ble must be made to pay. Grow­ing food rep­re­sents the work and sweat of the very peo­ple whose sweat built the Gov­ern­ment. It is there­fore not too much to ask for this is­sue to be im­me­di­ate­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dressed.

Jairam Bho­la

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