Shas­tri Boodan

More game war­dens are com­ing to deal with poach­ers and smug­glers, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries said.

His com­ment fol­lows a call by the pres­i­dent of the T&T As­sem­bly of Hunt­ing As­so­ci­a­tions (TTA­HA), Dr Reeza Mo­hammed for the widen­ing of the pool for ho­n­ourary game war­dens to in­clude law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Ram­barat said game war­dens are ap­point­ed by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

He said there are cur­rent­ly around 16 and added that the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in his min­istry has been in­ter­fac­ing with the Com­mis­sion to fill many va­can­cies in­clud­ing Game War­dens and For­est Of­fi­cers.

Mo­hammed had said that poach­ing is a ma­jor con­cern for the TTA­HA.

He said in 2018, the TTA­HA sent a plan to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture that pro­pos­es ap­point­ing mem­bers of the De­fense Force as Hon­orary Game War­dens, adding that this would save the state mon­ey, in­crease the man­pow­er to deal with smug­gling and max­i­mize the use of re­sources.

Mo­hammed said that be­cause there are no re­stric­tions per­tain­ing to the sale of wild meat dur­ing the hunt­ing sea­son, some ven­dors at­tempt to sell wild meat that has been smug­gled in­to T&T from South Amer­i­can coun­tries such as Venezuela.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Mo­hammed, un­der the pro­pos­al to in­cor­po­rate the De­fence Force, no ad­di­tion­al fund­ing will be re­quired for the pay­ment of salaries to the De­fense Force of­fi­cers since a pro­vi­sion is made for the pay­ment of salaries in the an­nu­al bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of the De­fense Force. No ad­di­tion­al pa­trol costs will be in­curred for ve­hi­cles and fu­el since these phys­i­cal re­quire­ments are al­ready in place an­nu­al­ly.