KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Bar­rack­pore farm­ers are plead­ing with the State to in­ves­ti­gate why some­one has turned their farm­lands in­to a dump­site.

Rats now run freely and flies over­run part of the lands con­trolled by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries off Julien Trace #2 where busi­ness­es dump mounds of co­conut shells af­ter ex­tract­ing the wa­ter for their prod­ucts.

Even worse, the farmer who al­leged­ly col­lects mon­ey to run the il­le­gal dump placed a chain across the en­trance, lead­ing to oth­er farm­ers hav­ing to car­ry their tools hun­dreds of me­tres in­to the lands.

Even when a farmer tried to use a trac­tor to dri­ve past the chains, burnt co­conut shells block the path­way.

Re­cent­ly, one of the pick-up trucks from a co­conut wa­ter com­pa­ny slipped in­to a pond, leav­ing it filled with dozens of shells. Farm­ers said it is more than five years now that they have this prob­lem, but it is get­ting worse.

De­spite com­plaints to the min­istry’s sub-of­fice in Pe­nal, farmer Ricky Gan­gad­har said per­son­nel there on­ly vis­it­ed the land once and said they would look in­to it.

“These peo­ple are dump­ing all this rub­bish here, block­ing up the ac­cess road lead­ing to my land. It is caus­ing rats, flies and cor­beau here. We want this to stop, and we want the road cleaned so we can ac­cess our land. We are tired of re­port­ing this to the min­istry, even in Batchiya by the farm, and they did ab­solute­ly noth­ing for us. 

Barrackpore Farmer Ricky Gangadhar shows the heaps of coconut shells which are being dumbed on the access road to his farm at St Julien #2, Barrackpore.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

“Many times we re­port­ed this, even last week, I called and in­formed them what was go­ing on, and we have not heard any­thing. This caus­es a lot of rats; big rats like man­i­cou run all over here. I had corn here, and when it was full, the rats climb the plants and eat a lot of my corn,” Gan­gad­har said.

Leroy Lowe said he had to take his chem­i­cals, pumps and plants to his land by hand be­cause the ac­cess road cre­at­ed by the min­istry is blocked. The last time Lowe tried to pass with his pick-up truck, the wheel got stuck in the co­conut shells, and an­oth­er farmer had to haul him out us­ing a trac­tor.

“It is not a nice thing at all be­cause if we are sup­posed to be pro­mot­ing agri­cul­ture, we can­not have one man do­ing this. We are try­ing, but peo­ple are los­ing mon­ey. I can­not even do any­thing right now be­cause I can­not lose my mon­ey again. I do not even have ac­cess to my gar­den to do what I want to do. 

“If I do try to plant some­thing, he comes in and mash­es it up and does what he wants. Ap­par­ent­ly, some­body in au­thor­i­ty knows what is go­ing on be­cause this fel­la keeps do­ing what he wants. Re­ports keep go­ing in, and noth­ing is be­ing done,” Lowe said.

Res­i­dents who live near­by pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia that when the er­rant farmer sets the shells on fire, the smoke is un­bear­able and the rats run in­to their homes. One res­i­dent said the smoke trig­gered asth­mat­ic at­tacks in his tod­dler and had to rush him to a health cen­tre on a few oc­ca­sions.

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Land and Fish­eries Clarence Ramb­harat told Guardian Me­dia that it was the first time he heard of the mat­ter.

Ramb­harat said he asked the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Su­san Shur­land to re­quest in­for­ma­tion from the di­rec­tor-Re­gion­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion, South. 

“Once I have the in­for­ma­tion, I will work with my col­league, the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to re­solve the mat­ter,” Ramb­harat said.