The Government Information Agency (GINA) said a team including consultants, contractors and representatives from the area’s Neighbourhood Democratic Council, the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) and the Crabwood Creek Water Users Association recently inspected the projects.
Works in the area, including providing access roads to farmlands are progressing. These works fall under the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture/Agriculture Support Services Programme (ASSP) and are valued at over $308M. This also includes the rehabilitation of two main outfall sluices, the cleaning of five road culverts along the main road and the construction of six secondary head regulators and six secondary canal regulators. The regulators will guarantee the irrigation command level both down and upstream of the structure, and employs a cheaper option of irrigating; gravity, GINA said. Additionally, 51 kilometers of road and six bridges are currently being built to decrease the length of farmers must take to access their farmlands.
The main objective of the ASSP is to provide the impetus for farmers to expand cultivation of rice and other crops in the Crabwood Creek area.
Project Consultant Ravi Narine said in the initial phase the availability and proper utilisation of water was one of the main limitations in the area which the project will seek to correct. Since its start in July, the farmers through the Water Users Association were empowered to play an integral role in the decision making process. Five months later, work on most of the structures has reached about 30 per cent completion.
“This area will be transformed into a more cost effective area of cultivating agricultural produce, through the intervention of these structures and canals,” Narine said. He pointed out that the law within the NDIA Act on tampering with structures still stands however; he noted that the D&I rehabilitation has been a success and as such illegalities are not as rampant as in the past. “The more infrastructure we put in is the less anxious farmers would be to tamper with the structure because water would be there for them,” Narine added.
With a farming population of over 1000 in the area, Regional Chairman Zulfikar Mustapha said the goal of making more lands available is being accomplished as more farmers are gravitating to the area. He said about two years ago there was a mere 500 to 700 acres of rice lands under cultivation. “Today, this number has climbed to about 3,500 acres and with Crabwood Creek possessing a total agriculture land mass of about 4,000 acres,” he said. Mustapha also said he is confident that in a year’s time the lands will be occupied.
Additionally, cash crop cultivation in the area has increased significantly in the last two years, with close to 3,000 acres under cultivation. “That is a tremendous improvement for us within this region and this Crabwood Creek area which has the potential of producing a lot… the Ministry of Agriculture has been playing an important part in helping us to develop. Besides the budget we normally have to execute over the year, I think that the Ministry of Agriculture through the ASSP project, we have had many projects being executed,” Mustapha said.
Meanwhile, Secretary of the Crabwood Creek Water Users Association Krishenchund Raman noted that the project is progressing. “We have more people in the backdam and now Crabwood creek can be noted as we are coming in…people are getting in and out of their farms late and early and have their produce from road to the backdam in less time with more profits to their pockets,” he said.
According to GINA, the work being undertaken in the Crabwood Creek area is just one component of other major works being done at Vergenoegen/Bonasika, Den Amstel/ Fellowship, Vreed-en-Hoop/La Jalousie and Golden Grove/Victoria. NDIA CEO Lionel Wordsworth said a major rehabilitation project of about 76 miles of canals and drains started in 2008 while another 30 miles is expected to be completed by March.
He added that to complement efforts to make agricultural lands available in Region Six, drainage works are also ongoing in Moleson Creek where about 12,000 acres of land are to be cultivated.
