RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

It has been more than a month since Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein promised to hire 40 new of­fi­cers for the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad and pur­chase three new pa­trol ve­hi­cles.

But farm­ers at Cedar Hill, Princes Town, say they are con­tin­u­ing to face ma­jor theft in their agri­cul­tur­al fields.

Pres­i­dent of the Cedar Hill Es­tate Farm­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Sharon Thomas said yes­ter­day that thieves have still been raid­ing their fields and al­though re­ports are made to the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion, lit­tle has been done to ar­rest the thieves.

She said in late Jan­u­ary, 14 beds of sweet pota­toes and cas­sa­va were pil­fered.

“We lost over $10,000 worth of crops and the po­lice have not found the cul­prits,” she said.

Thomas said be­fore 2021, a team of of­fi­cers at­tached to the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad in Craig­nish made reg­u­lar pa­trols in the farm­ing area but she said changes were sub­se­quent­ly made to the unit and since then pa­trols have dried up.

“The Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad, which re­cent­ly ‘downed tools’, are not the same of­fi­cers who pa­trolled our farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties or as­sist­ed us in our mo­ments of dis­tress,” she said.

Thomas said the of­fi­cers at Craig­nish should be re­in­stat­ed.

“These of­fi­cers are very hard work­ing and the re­sults of this are seen in the nu­mer­ous ar­rests made in the South­ern Di­vi­sion be­fore,” she added.

Three days ago, the min­istry ad­ver­tised for the re­cruit­ment of Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny of­fi­cers.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate a few weeks ago, Ho­sein said he in­tend­ed to ad­dress the is­sue of lar­ce­ny by boost­ing the squad with ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er and ve­hi­cles.

He said be­cause of the in­crease in lar­ce­ny of crops and live­stock, the unit has been de­pend­ing on the TTPS, Trinidad and To­ba­go Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS) and the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EM­BD) Po­lice to re­spond and as­sist with re­port­ed in­ci­dents of theft.

He al­so gave the as­sur­ance that all con­cerns made by the squad will be ad­dressed.

Po­lice of­fi­cers have com­plained of poor work­ing con­di­tions and dis­crep­an­cies in salaries of of­fi­cers.

Since May last year, for­mer TTPS Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Sheri­don Hill had con­firmed an in­crease in prae­di­al lar­ce­ny re­ports.

MP for Moru­ga, Michelle Ben­jamin, al­so said 50 per cent of the peo­ple in her con­stituen­cy were in­volved in farm­ing and prae­di­al lar­ce­ny has been a big prob­lem since the unit went down.