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Monday, February 17, 2025

Calls for Praedial Larceny Squad to be disbanded

by

Rishard Khan
721 days ago
20230226
Dairy farmer Donny Roger with his calves that went missing.

Dairy farmer Donny Roger with his calves that went missing.

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad is call­ing for the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad to be dis­band­ed un­til it can be op­er­a­tionalised ef­fi­cient­ly.

His call comes af­ter the squad was un­able to re­spond to a Carlsen Field farmer’s call for help af­ter his live­stock, val­ued at $50,000, was stolen, al­though it has an of­fice just me­tres from the man’s farm.

The dairy farmer, Don­ny Roger, told Guardian Me­dia he dis­cov­ered his sev­en an­i­mals miss­ing over the last few days. How­ev­er, he claimed he dis­cov­ered them on a near­by farm yes­ter­day, af­ter which he re­port­ed it to the near­by Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad sta­tion. How­ev­er, he said he was told the of­fi­cers would be un­able to re­spond due to a lack of staff and ve­hi­cles.

“The re­al­i­ty of when some­one steals a cow, you are steal­ing gen­er­a­tions of rev­enue to come. Re­mem­ber, from a cow you go­ing to get off­springs, you go­ing to get more off­spring. Those off­springs go­ing to give more off­springs,” he said.

Fur­ther­more, he said a live­stock farmer al­so los­es all the work put in to breed an an­i­mal with the de­sired ge­net­ic traits.

“When you lose that, you lose five to 10 years of re­sources be­ing in­vest­ed in­to an­i­mals,” Roger said.

Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Ram­per­sad mean­while told Guardian Me­dia that prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is a per­sist­ing is­sue for farm­ers but this in­ci­dent was “the straw that break the camel’s back.”

“You have an in­ci­dent tak­ing place a few me­ters away from a Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny sta­tion and they stat­ing that they can’t do any­thing about it. So what is to say in oth­er ar­eas where we don’t have a Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Sta­tion?” he said.

“There is noth­ing be­ing done. I have con­stant com­plaints from the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty as it per­tains to prae­di­al lar­ce­ny and if this unit can­not get it right, shut it down. Don’t waste tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on in­di­vid­u­als who not per­form­ing. Get rid of that.”

He said as the chair of the Vol­un­tary Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, he has al­so been in di­a­logue with the au­thor­i­ties. How­ev­er, he said he could no longer keep silent on the mat­ter.

“(It) wast­ing time. No way could 37 of­fi­cers and four ve­hi­cles ser­vice an en­tire coun­try. That’s just a waste of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey out there,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to get a com­ment from Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Kaz­im Ho­sein, as he did not re­spond to calls yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, re­spond­ing to a ques­tion in the Sen­ate on Jan­u­ary 25, Ho­sein said the unit has been mak­ing ad­just­ments “to re­align with the cur­rent needs, based on re­ports re­ceived.”

“This is to fa­cil­i­tate an ad­e­quate re­sponse util­is­ing the of­fi­cers we have in the short term. The Min­istry is seek­ing to en­gage more of­fi­cers in the medi­um term, through re­cruit­ment. While the Min­istry awaits the full com­ple­ment of staff for the squad, the of­fi­cers have al­so es­tab­lished com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines with the var­i­ous farm­ers’ groups through­out the coun­try. So they are aware of the af­fect­ed farm­ers or ar­eas where prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is tak­ing place. In this way, we can re­spond uti­liz­ing the sup­port sys­tem pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned with the TTPS, the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice and the EM­BD po­lice,” he said.

He added that his min­istry is work­ing with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion to hire 40 ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers with­in the com­ing months. He said they were al­so hop­ing to com­plete the process of ac­quir­ing three ad­di­tion­al ve­hi­cles for the of­fi­cers by this month.


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