Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Farm­ers in Aranguez are call­ing on au­thor­i­ties to take swift ac­tion against il­le­gal mi­grants, claim­ing that their ac­tiv­i­ties are caus­ing con­sid­er­able dam­age to the river­bank in San Juan.

The farm­ers have ex­pressed con­cern that Venezue­lan and oth­er Span­ish-speak­ing na­tion­als have set up shacks and start­ed plant­i­ng crops along the river­bank, ex­ac­er­bat­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age.

They are al­so fac­ing an in­crease in prae­di­al lar­ce­ny in the area.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Di­rec­tor of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASTT) Sar­fraz Ali said, “The Min­istry of Works has car­ried out ex­ten­sive work over the past two years, in­vest­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to con­struct a two-step river­bank. This de­sign in­cludes a hor­i­zon­tal flat sec­tion fol­lowed by a ver­ti­cal rise and an­oth­er flat lev­el, ef­fec­tive­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant vol­ume of wa­ter dur­ing that pe­ri­od.”

Ali ex­plained, “Pre­vi­ous­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als from Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly South Amer­i­ca, ar­rived in the area. While it is un­clear whether their en­try was le­gal or il­le­gal due to a lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion, their num­bers are in the hun­dreds. These in­di­vid­u­als have been seen plant­i­ng crops, pre­dom­i­nant­ly let­tuce, on both flat lev­els of the two-step river­bank. This con­stant plant­i­ng has led to soil ero­sion, as the loose soil is washed away by the riv­er when wa­ter lev­els rise.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ali, the mi­grants have been liv­ing in the area for some time, and the ef­fects are al­ready ev­i­dent.

“There is clear ev­i­dence that over five feet of the low­er flat sec­tion of the river­bank has been erod­ed. The two-step de­sign is be­ing lost, re­placed by a sin­gle gra­di­ent in some ar­eas. With an­oth­er ma­jor flood, it’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the wa­ter breach­es this weak­ened struc­ture, pos­ing a se­ri­ous threat to thou­sands of res­i­dents and farm­ers near­by. This sit­u­a­tion is dire and de­mands ur­gent at­ten­tion.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, shacks could be seen along the river­bank, with mi­grants liv­ing there with their fam­i­lies.

The ASTT di­rec­tor called on au­thor­i­ties to in­ter­vene, say­ing, “We can­not con­done such bla­tant il­le­gal­i­ty. As na­tion­als, we would nev­er be per­mit­ted to go to Venezuela, oc­cu­py a river­bank, plant crops, and build shacks. Such ac­tions would re­sult in im­pris­on­ment or worse. So why are we ex­tend­ing this cour­tesy here? By al­low­ing this to con­tin­ue, we are ef­fec­tive­ly en­dors­ing il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Farmer Ba­harat Ram­per­sad, who lives and op­er­ates a farm in the area, ex­pressed con­cern about the im­pact on the com­mu­ni­ty.

“We, as farm­ers, pro­vide food for the na­tion, and if flood­ing were to oc­cur, the en­tire coun­try would feel the im­pact. Prices would es­ca­late, and we would strug­gle to sup­port our fam­i­lies, mak­ing this a loss-loss sit­u­a­tion for farm­ers,” Ram­per­sad stat­ed.

He added that prae­di­al lar­ce­ny re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant is­sue. While there are un­con­firmed re­ports of in­volve­ment by some Venezue­lan na­tion­als, the greater chal­lenge lies with en­force­ment.

“The Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad is mak­ing ef­forts, but the court sys­tem un­der­mines their work,” he ex­plained.

Ram­per­sad re­count­ed a re­cent in­ci­dent: “I caught some­one steal­ing, the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad in­ter­vened and ar­rest­ed him, but in court, he re­ceived a slap on the wrist—three months of hard labour and a $3,000 fine. He had three pend­ing war­rants and was still re­leased short­ly af­ter. Farm­ers are strug­gling to sur­vive un­der these pres­sures, fac­ing threats from both nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and sys­temic chal­lenges.”

One of the mi­grants said yes­ter­day, “We have nowhere to go, and this is the on­ly op­tion we have.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion re­moved mi­grants along the river­bank a cou­ple of years ago.

Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.