Agri. Ministry’s extension arm being reorganised to ensure efficiency

Jul 14, 2021 News

Kaieteur News – On Saturday last, Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha, met with residents and farmers from Canje, Berbice, and assured them that assessments are ongoing to determine the amount of losses they would have 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 that a team from his Ministry has been in the Region conducting an assessment. Some residents would have 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 Departments 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.
The Minister said, “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 the National Agricultural Research and Extension institute (NAREI), Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA), Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB), and the other agencies that are supposed to be going house-to-house to do these assessments.”
He added, “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 reorganising the entire extension arm of the ministry.”
Minister Mustapha also disclosed that $40 million has been allocated to carry out land clearing for agricultural development across the country.
Minister Mustapha also told residents that the Pepper Sluice, which is located in Canefield, Canje, would be reactivated and that the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) will be making machines available to execute all of the works residents would’ve requested. He also advised residents to work with their various Regional Officers to make requests for projects so that funds can be made available in the 2022 budget.
Moving ahead at the Rose Hall Estate
Minister Mustapha also told residents that government was aggressively moving ahead with the planed reopening of the Rose Hall Estate.
He said, “We are pushing for Rose Hall. Last week we signed a number of contracts for equipment for the estate. Equipment to do tillage and so on. We’ve had several meetings with the estate’s manager. Planting there has commenced and hopefully we can get the factory going by the end of next year. It will take alot of resources to move Rose Hall.”
The Minister continued, “We have limited resources but we are working very hard. Our objective is to reduce the cost of production and over the next few years, GuySuCo will be working to ensure more effort is put into packaged sugar rather than bulk sugar because packet sugar is more lucrative.”
He added, “So when we open estates like the one at Rose Hall that will be our focus. We are also looking to improve GuySuCo’s packaging plants. We have one at Enmore and one at Blairmont and we are looking to improve those by making them larger so that we can produce more packaged sugar.”

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