Co­coa pro­duc­ers have lost mil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue be­cause of the land­slides at Gran Cou­va. Di­ane Chin­pire, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of the board of di­rec­tors of the Montser­rat Co­coa Farm­ers Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Lim­it­ed (MCFC­SL) said since the ma­jor land­slide oc­curred in No­vem­ber 2022 farm­ers have been los­ing mon­ey dai­ly. She said be­cause Cameron Road, the by­pass road, can­not take ve­hi­cles that weigh more than 3 tonnes, mon­ey has to be spent to move and load beans on­to a small­er truck and trans­port them to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion. From there it has to be loaded on­to con­tain­ers for ex­port.

Chin­pire ac­cused gov­ern­ment of not do­ing enough to help squeeze co­coa pro­duc­ers in the area, which she said was ev­i­dent by the lack of ac­tion in deal­ing with land­slides im­me­di­ate­ly.

“We have the best co­coa in T&T and they are ne­glect­ing the in­dus­try. Farm­ers don’t want to come here and de­liv­er wet beans, we have prob­lems get­ting labour, trans­port re­mains a chal­lenge to get pro­duce in and out of the area, the farm­ers are the ones los­ing all around. We have the up­com­ing Co­coa Fes­ti­val in April which at­tracts around 2,500 pa­trons, this year we are hop­ing that we may get the same amount of peo­ple. But be­cause of the land­slides peo­ple don’t want to come. Ar­ti­san choco­late pro­duc­ers do not want to come to get sup­plies of the co­op­er­a­tive and farm­ers are los­ing out,” she said.

Bertram Man­hin, 89, the own­er of the La Ve­ga Es­tate, an agro-tourism ven­ture in Gran Cou­va, said his busi­ness may have lost around $500,000 since the land­slide oc­curred. Man­hin said most of the loss­es re­sult­ed from in­creased trans­porta­tion costs to get goods in and out of the 240-acre es­tate. Man­hin said sales have al­so dropped by more than 10 per cent be­cause peo­ple are afraid of com­ing to the area be­cause of the land­slide. “The road was bad be­fore and it kept a lot of peo­ple out, we told them, it was fixed. But then the land­slide came and peo­ple had the im­pres­sion that we were ma­rooned, but there is a de­tour. They had stopped heavy traf­fic on the de­tour and it cost us a lot of mon­ey to rent a spot on the out­side and to get trucks to bring things to that spot,” he lament­ed.

Man­hin said he did not have to re­trench any of his 50 em­ploy­ees but was forced to cut their work­ing hours. Man­hin said it would help a lot if the gov­ern­ment moved quick­ly to find a so­lu­tion. At the Bras­so end of the road, half of the road has col­lapsed al­low­ing for light one way traf­fic

Res­i­dent Vashtree Beesan, said she has to walk over a land­slide to get a taxi.

“When taxis are work­ing they don’t drop you home and you have to walk up. Up by me, the whole road could drop down any­time.”

Franklyn Wells, 54, claimed land­slides are caus­ing sleep­less nights in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Re­al ve­hi­cle have to pass here, two house fall down here, that back­road (re­fer­ring to Cameron Road) not so whole­some, if a back truck pass there the whole road could col­lapse. If them truck get away go­ing down that hill, peo­ple dead yuh know,” he claimed.

Res­i­dents said they feel ne­glect­ed.

Ear­li­er this month they protest­ed the poor road con­di­tions and land­slides.