The G Persaud and Son Factory, at Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara, home of Vishal’s Quality Food products—including bottled seasonings, peppers and chowmein—was destroyed by fire suspected of starting in a manual charcoal-powered chowmein dryer.
Some ten persons are now jobless, while dealers will be expecting stocks. The deals, the media were told, were only sealed recently as the business was now beginning to blossom and marketing avenues being explored.
It was the owner’s son Rajanand Singh who discovered that the building was on fire, some time after 8 pm, when he went to do a routine check of the factory, which was housed at the back of the home of owner Gildharie Persaud at Lot 54 Agriculture Road.
Singh said the chowmein dryer is usually left on with supervisory checks during the night to ensure all was well. When he went check on the dryer he noticed that a part of the factory was ablaze and raised an alarm. Neighbours called the fire service as they formed a bucket brigade. The nearby Enmore Sugar Factory dispatched its fire engine which worked until a fire tender from the city arrived.
“I went to check on the chowmein drying and saw the fire and shouted for help,” the young man said. “We had to act fast because nearby is this [pointing to an industrial sized tank of propane gas] and if the fire came here was worries. This whole neighbourhood would be in jeopardy,” he added.
Persaud lamented that he had invested all of his lifelong savings into the business and could not even afford insurance. “Everything I had I put into this business time and money; no I don’t have insurance because I couldn’t afford insurance because that would take too much and I didn’t have it,” he said.
He said that while the fire service did the best it could the fire raises the need for a station on the East Coast Demerara as the time it took for the city’s tender to reach the location, if there wasn’t the bucket brigade and sugar factory tender the results would have been dire.
The family plans to restart the operation as soon as they garner enough funds. However, this time around they will move from manual to automatic and more modernised ways of producing their products. “We can’t let this get us down. We will start again but will look at having an electric dryer and maybe some insurance,” Persaud said.
