Renu­ka Singh

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat yes­ter­day gave the as­sur­ance that food ham­pers are be­ing de­liv­ered to all con­stituen­cies.

Ramb­harat at­tend­ed the post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s and took Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Juan\Barataria Sad­dam Ho­sein to task for not pro­vid­ing names of those in his con­stituen­cy that need the food ham­pers.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Ho­sein said that Ramb­harat was not pro­vid­ing ham­pers for his area.

“It sur­prised me that of all the MP’s he would be one out in the pub­lic talk­ing about that be­cause I re­ceived sev­er­al mes­sages from peo­ple in his con­stituen­cy,” Ramb­harat said.

Ramb­harat read out one mes­sage from a mem­ber of Ho­sein’s con­stituen­cy who said that when she con­tact­ed the MP’s of­fice she was told that there were no ham­pers to give out.

“I know for a fact that we have sent 200 (ham­pers) to that con­stituen­cy,” Ramb­harat said.

Ramb­harat said that the Gov­ern­ment promised 600 food bas­kets and then dou­bled that to 1,200.

“But you will on­ly get your ham­pers if you had in­di­cat­ed that I have 100 names, I have 100 fam­i­lies to give it to. So MP Sad­dam Ho­sein was re­al­ly a shock to me be­cause so far he has on­ly giv­en 200 names,” Ramb­harat said.

The Min­is­ter said that af­ter Ho­sein’s me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, he ex­pect­ed him to sub­mit 400 names to NAMDE­V­CO for ham­pers.

“I checked and they said to me, no we’ve got­ten noth­ing,” he said.

Ramb­harat said that MP for Moru­ga, Michelle Ben­jamin re­quest­ed an­oth­er 200 to add to the 400 she al­ready got­ten and it was be­ing pre­pared for dis­patch.

Ramb­harat said that Ho­sein “need­ed to get his head ex­am­ined” af­ter he on­ly sup­plied 200 names yet went on a me­dia con­fer­ence seek­ing to blame the Gov­ern­ment for not sup­ply­ing what he nev­er re­quest­ed.

Two non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions in that same area reached out to NAMDE­V­CO and bas­kets were pro­vid­ed to them.

“That gives me some as­sur­ance that while Sad­dam Ho­sein sits wher­ev­er and does noth­ing, two NGO’s got pack­ages,” he said.

He said that while pack­ing up the ham­pers if ex­tras are avail­able, they would be sent to the NGO’s.

Ramb­harat said that Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has al­ready sur­passed the 400 and may go be­yond the 600 lim­it.

“If he goes be­yond 600 in his com­mu­ni­ty and we are able to deal with it, we would,” he said.

Ramb­harat gave the as­sur­ance that the food ham­pers un­til the end of Au­gust and in the next fi­nan­cial cy­cle will be­come a per­ma­nent part of the Gov­ern­ment’s food out­reach pro­gramme.