SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Co­coa in­dus­try in Cen­tral Trinidad is set to col­lapse un­less ur­gent work is un­der­tak­en to re­pair the road in­fra­struc­ture in Gran Cou­va.

Di­ane Chin­pire, the As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary and spokesper­son of the Montser­rat Co­coa Farm­ers Co-op (MCF) said 400 tons of dried co­coa beans may just go down the drain un­less some­thing hap­pens soon.

Chin­pire said the main road­way to the es­tate is col­laps­ing.  She said the three main co­coa ex­porters that would feel the blow are the Montser­rat Co­coa Farm­ers Co-op, the San Juan Es­tate and the Tabaquite Co­coa Fer­men­tary.

"Close to 10 con­tain­ers of dried co­coa beans are ex­port­ed per year to in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers. Due to poor road con­di­tions, trucks are hes­i­tant to col­lect the con­tain­ers for ship­ment.  Dri­vers fear that be­cause of the bad roads the trucks may over­turn when tra­vers­ing the land­slide along the main road­way,” she said.

“Fail­ure to un­der­take work will di­rect­ly im­pact the or­ga­ni­za­tions fi­nan­cial­ly, in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers will be lost, the co­coa in­dus­try will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed and there will be a loss in for­eign ex­change for the coun­try,” Chin­pire point­ed out.

She added: “The Gran Cou­va area boasts the best co­coa in the world—Trini­tario Co­coa. The MCF has nowhere else that is ac­ces­si­ble and con­ducive to pack­ing the con­tain­ers.  All oth­er op­tions would come at a sig­nif­i­cant cost which MCF will not be able to ab­sorb, and pass­ing that on to the cus­tomers will not be fair."

Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes said ap­provals had been giv­en by the Pro­gramme for the Up­grade of Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) to car­ry out the re­pairs.

"It is now in the hands of the Min­istry of Works to re­lease the fund­ing to get the re­pairs done quick­ly," the Tabaquite MP stat­ed.

MP Haynes said the com­mu­ni­ty pro­duces some of the best co­coa and the area is an im­por­tant con­trib­u­tor of agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts. She said a large num­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty is em­ployed in the in­dus­try.