Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s elec­tion de­feat in Aranguez/ St Joseph may have been due in part to grow­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion among farm­ers in the con­stituen­cy.

This was one of the ex­pla­na­tions put for­ward by res­i­dents fol­low­ing Deyals­ingh’s re­sound­ing de­feat in Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Deyals­ingh, who had served as Min­is­ter of Health since be­ing elect­ed in­to of­fice in 2015, got 6,672 votes, while Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ De­vesh Ma­haraj amassed 9,908 votes.

Aranguez/St Joseph was one of the three con­stituen­cies along the East-West Cor­ri­dor lost by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in Mon­day’s elec­tions. The par­ty al­so lost Tu­na­puna and To­co/ San­gre Grande.

Life-long Aranguez res­i­dent Natasha Ramdeen, a farmer and ven­dor, said while crime af­fect­ed all liveli­hoods to some ex­tent, she was par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ed by prae­di­al lar­ce­ny.

“There’s a lot of theft. We are farm­ers and they keep thief­ing our stuff and no­body did any­thing. I think that’s one of the rea­sons he lost his seat,” she said.

“I think the big con­cern is the rob­beries go­ing on and the char­ac­ters com­ing in­to the com­mu­ni­ty who are do­ing it.

“It has a lot of strange peo­ple in the back (back­roads) and even if we are plant­i­ng, they will come and bull­doze the peo­ple who are grow­ing crops there.

“There are oth­er peo­ple plant­i­ng crops and noth­ing is hap­pen­ing to them.”

Ramdeen said she un­der­stood that the in­com­ing MP would not be able to ad­dress every, sin­gle con­cern, but she urged him to make the se­cu­ri­ty of farm­ers a pri­or­i­ty.

She said she could not even risk walk­ing on the street out­side of her stall be­cause of the pres­ence of strangers who were some­times armed with guns.

“We know that he has to take every­thing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and he’ll have to take the ma­jor is­sues peo­ple are fac­ing, I know he can’t do every lit­tle thing but the home in­va­sions, the thefts are se­ri­ous,” she said.

An­oth­er long-time res­i­dent Sar­ron Ar­joon said the lack of main­te­nance of in­fra­struc­ture in the com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing roads and a bridge, left many farm­ers frus­trat­ed.

“Most of the peo­ple around here are farm­ers. Over the high­way there’s a riv­er there ... the bridge broke and I’m sure peo­ple com­plained but they nev­er did any­thing.”

Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad said dur­ing his elec­tion cam­paign Ma­haraj worked to es­tab­lish firm sup­port among farm­ers and held two meet­ings.

Ram­per­sad said it was not sur­pris­ing that the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty had sup­port­ed a new MP giv­en the chal­lenges they faced.

“Most of the Aranguez res­i­dents are mem­bers of the agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty who re­ly on agri­cul­ture for their liv­ing, so one of the main is­sues will be ir­ri­ga­tion and the clear­ing of chan­nels,” he said.

“There’s a di­lap­i­dat­ed bridge with­in that Aranguez south area which most farm­ers use. We have been plead­ing to have those chan­nels cleared, not on­ly due to the elec­tions but over the past cou­ple of years and the farm­ers have been ne­glect­ed in that par­tic­u­lar area. It’s an area where you see a lot of flood­ing al­so and I be­lieve the farm­ers turned to a dif­fer­ent par­ty for sup­port.”

Ram­per­sad said he was grate­ful that Ma­haraj had shown in­ter­est in the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty and he hoped he would con­tin­ue to build on the re­la­tion­ship as he en­ters of­fice.

Ef­forts to con­tact Ma­haraj and Deyals­ingh for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.