RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat says T&T has the ca­pac­i­ty to feed it­self and enough land to boost food pro­duc­tion for ex­port.

De­liv­er­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion on the Bud­get in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Ramb­harat said COVID-19 has been a cat­a­lyst which re­sult­ed in in­creased lo­cal food pro­duc­tion.

Call­ing on the en­tire coun­try to sup­port lo­cal farm­ers, Ramb­harat said COVID-19 has clear­ly demon­strat­ed that T&T had enough food to feed the en­tire coun­try.

“We have the farm­ing ca­pac­i­ty and land avail­abil­i­ty to in­crease our pro­duc­tion so T&T could take its place to once again be ex­port­ing to our di­as­po­ra,” Ramb­harat said.

He added, “Those per­sons who got keen on farm­ing, the seeds dis­trib­uted, peo­ple en­gag­ing in their the home gar­den. That is what this coun­try needs.” 

 “It’s not about the $4 bil­lion or $5 bil­lion food im­port bill, it’s about sup­port­ing our lo­cal farm­ers. Watch your cup­board and fridge and think about the young pro­duc­ers. Go to the mar­ket and look at h ow many are drawn in­to lo­cal food pro­duc­tion. If you make the de­ci­sion to buy lo­cal, we will get the food im­port bill down,” Ramb­harat said.

But Sen­a­tor Paul Richards in his pre­sen­ta­tion re­spond­ed to Ramb­harat say­ing agri­cul­tur­al poli­cies should have been im­ple­ment­ed a long time ago.

“Why did we have to wait for COVID to do these things. We knew the coun­try is fac­ing a dif­fi­cult time. Why we have to wait for the cat­a­lyst of COVID con­fus­es me,” Richards said.

He ex­plained that the an­nounce­ment to es­tab­lish in­ter­net cafes was re­ac­tionary not­ing that for­ward-think­ing coun­tries have pro­vid­ed na­tion­wide WiFi. How­ev­er, he said im­ple­men­ta­tion has al­ways been a prob­lem with suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments.

“We should ex­pect more pan­demics. The an­nounce­ment of na­tion­wide WiFi was pro­nounced in 2015 and 2016 Bud­gets but it nev­er ma­te­ri­al­ized. If we ac­tu­al­ly ac­com­plished that in the 2015 and 2016 we would have been bet­ter able to deal with the pan­dem­ic,” Richards said.

Not­ing that WiFi is as ba­sic as elec­tric­i­ty, Richards said na­tion­wide con­nec­tiv­i­ty is the on­ly way T&T can com­pete on a glob­al lev­el.

With re­gard to for­eign used and new ve­hi­cles, Richards said de­mand was high be­cause pub­lic trans­porta­tion was abysmal.

“Why is there such a big de­mand for new and used ve­hi­cles.  If we had a de­pend­able re­li­able pub­lic trans­porta­tion, there will be no need for peo­ple to buy ve­hi­cles,” Richards said.

He said the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) should be ex­pand­ed to of­fer more ser­vices in­clud­ing high­er lux­u­ry trans­porta­tion, ve­hi­cle rental, taxis, bus dri­ves, restau­rant din­ing and oth­er ser­vices.

“Imag­ine for a sec­ond that PTSC has an app that tells peo­ple where the bus­es are. The ter­mi­nal busi­ness in most met­ro­pol­i­tan cities is big. City Gate in its en­tire­ty is sub­stan­dard. We don’t need a rapid rail. We need a prop­er trans­porta­tion sys­tem, pub­lic ser­vice, es­tab­lished hubs,” Richards said.

Say­ing he was not beat­ing up on PTSC, Richards said some State en­ter­pris­es have be­come a bur­den to the State. 

He al­so ques­tioned whether any analy­sis had been done on the suc­cess and fail­ures of NED­CO. He not­ed that checks should be put in place to see whether NED­CO is ac­tu­al­ly as­sist­ing in busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.

He al­so said TTPost was a good ex­am­ple of how a State en­ter­prise could be run ef­fi­cient­ly. 

Richards al­so said that spe­cial needs chil­dren were not be­ing treat­ed equal­ly in T&T. 

Quot­ing a study done by Sup­port Autism TT and its founder Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase, Richards said 31.6 per cent of spe­cial needs chil­dren have no ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, while on­ly 16.6 per cent is en­rolled in pub­lic schools.

“Does every creed and race have an equal place? They are no less en­ti­tled. We have been fail­ing them abysmal­ly,” he said. 

Richards said while Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly was a breath of fresh air to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry he was hop­ing that bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties would be cre­at­ed for spe­cial-needs chil­dren.