Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha has disclosed that $40M has been allocated to carry out land clearing for agricultural development across the country. He made this announcement during a meeting with Canje, Berbice farmers and residents last Saturday.
“Usually when I traverse the country, farmers make requests for land clearing. We asked the RDC to give us some areas. We have $40 million in our budget to do land clearing for agriculture. Those funds are under the NDIA work program. If those requests don’t come to us we cannot expend those funds. We’ve been working through all the local bodies,” Minister Mustapha said.
He also told residents that the Pepper Sluice which is located in Canefield, Canje will be reactivated and that the NDIA will be making machines available to execute all of the works residents requested. He also advised residents to work with their various Regional Officer to make requests for projects so that funds can be made available in the 2022 budget.
The Minister also assured the farmers and residents that assessments are ongoing to determine the amount of losses they encountered as a result of the recent flooding.
During a meeting at the Betsy Ground Primary School in East Canje Berbice, Minister Mustapha informed residents a team from his Ministry has been in the Region conducting an assessment.
Some residents raised concerns about not being visited by any representative from the Ministry so far. After hearing these claims, Minister Mustapha asked the various Heads of Department for the list of farmers visited so far. It was later confirmed that farmers who made claims of being omitted from the exercise were not at home when the officers visited their farms. It was also discovered that the extension staff did indeed capture their losses but in many cases, their relatives gave the officers ‘call names’ and not birth names.
“I’m sure you would’ve heard me say that an assessment must be done to verify the losses that people suffered during the flood. Those instructions were given across the country. We have teams in Region Six comprising of officers from NAREI, GLDA, GRDB, and the other agencies that are supposed to be going house-to-house to do these assessments. If those officers are not doing this, they will be held accountable. For too long people have been receiving salaries at the end of the month for substandard work. Farmers have been saying that they are making requests but those requests are not being fulfilled and in turn the government is being blamed. We have been making the necessary resources available so there should be no excuse for not carrying out the work. This is why I’m in the process of reorganizing the entire extension arm of the ministry,” Minister Mustapha said.
