Orealla and Siparuta in the south of Region Six will soon have an extension officer to assist them with farming, Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha announced during an outreach on Monday, while noting that he also hopes to reopen the fruit cheese factory located in Orealla.
Mustapha, while speaking to residents in Orealla, said that the extension officer will have to come from the community. Residents will have to select someone who will be trained by the Ministry of Agriculture to work in both communities.
The minister said, “I know for a long time we did not have an extension officer to help you plant your crops… give you advice and the kind of assistance you needed, so I want to throw out a challenge to you that you select someone here who is capable and we will train that person and we will hire that person to help you here in the community of Orealla and Siparuta”.
Notably, when Mustapha later visited Siparuta, before he could address the gathering, the first request from one pineapple vendor, Augenia Ally, 50, was to have an extension officer in the community.
She was then informed of the decision to hire and train someone from her community. The minister also
pledged to work with the villagers to possibly restart the Tarakuli Fruit Cheese Factory located in the village.
Mustapha, who was accompanied by Natural Resources Minister, Vickram Bharrat, said “If it’s not working I want to work along with you and work along with the village committee and bring back this factory back into operation so that the community can once again get a viable and economic activity going on”.
Toshao of Orealla/Siparuta, Carl Peneux, 64, explained, that many years ago a Belgian couple after visiting Orealla and noticing the lack of employment returned and financed the building of the factory where they began to employ women in the village to produce fruit cheeses.
According to him, the couple exported the produce to international and Caribbean markets. However, after operating for about ten years the couple decided to return to their country and left the factory in the hands of a women’s committee. Peneux, said that the committee operated for some time but then slowly started to lose the export markets and then eventually went out of production.
According to him, the factory not only offered employment to residents but “they would also purchase the fruits from residents so that help out people too”.
Peneux told Stabroek News that while they welcome the idea of reopening the fruit cheese factory they can also now look at using the facility to possibly package cassava bread and bottling their casareep.
The toshao stressed that the factory has a lot of potential. He noted that several follow-up meetings will have to be held with Mustapha on the way forward.
Incentives for farmers
While telling the residents that it was important for them to also be a part of new crops production, Mustapha said, “We are giving incentives for farmers who are willing to start corn and soya beans”.
He said Guyana has been importing those items and it is now time that Guyanese farm these crops.
He said that he has also given instructions to re-implement the seedling and acoushi ants programmes and inputs were distributed in the villages on Monday. The minister said, “Although the previous government would have budgeted almost every year $10M to do the acoushi ants programme they never distributed”.
He said, “We have brought bait and that will be a regular programme now in all the interior and hinterland communities because we know for a fact that acoushi ants normally destroys people crop in these areas and we will be giving those baits free of cost to the farmers of Orealla and Siparuta”.
Mustapha also pledged ten rolls of mesh to residents who requested the same to use it for an area which they have since identified for cattle rearing.
Residents seemed enthused about the visit. One older resident, Janice Herman, even took a notebook and jotted down notes throughout the meeting. She told Mustapha that she was extremely grateful for the initiative to possibly reopen the factory, as she was once employed there.
