The opening of a $50 million paddy drying facility in Lesbeholden, Black Bush Polder has not had the impact it should; in fact, farmers say, it has had no impact at all.
The mechanical dryer has never been used and rats have damaged the electrical wiring at the facility. “If you got equipment and you na using it, wa you expect going to happen?” a farmer, who spoke with Stabroek News via telephone but declined to have his name published, asked. “Since they put that place there is only the concrete drying floor farmers been using and million dollar equipment dem just there sitting around.”
This is the second time in just over a month that farmers are raising concerns about the facility. In July 2008, management of the facility was handed over to the Rice Producers’ Association (RPA) and the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB). The project was funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization in collaboration with the government and was intended to provide certain advantages to farmers.
It has been more than two years and they are still waiting for the facility to function as it should, another Lesbeholden farmer said. For the last four crops, according to him, farmers have been drying their paddy on the concrete drying floor in the facility’s compound.
Approximately 120 bags of paddy, the farmer explained, can be dried on the floor at a time. The mechanical dryer and cleaner, he said, have been laid up in the facility and farmers have never benefited from these. The RPA and GRDB, the farmer said, only recently decided to construct a shed over the dryer.
General Secretary of the RPA Dharamkumar Seeraj earlier denied claims by farmers that the facility is a “white elephant”. However, he had admitted that since its commissioning the mechanical dryer had not been used and offered the feeble excuse of a large enough quantity of paddy never being available to utilize the machine.
The cleaner, according to the farmer, was “bunt” and could not be used. However, it has since been fixed. A contractor from Region Three, the farmer further said, was recently given the task of rewiring the bond. Rats, he explained, had damaged the electrical wiring in the place.
“After the thing there and not being used like it got to be all kinda thing happening to it,” he said.
The mechanical dryer, he further said, was recently switched on to ensure that it was still working. However, the machine was not tested with paddy, he said.
Meanwhile, another farmer explained that paddy growers from several villages go to the Lesbeholden facility to use the concrete drying floor. Hundreds of bags of paddy are dried in the open air, he explained, and it is simply ridiculous that Seeraj would say there isn’t enough paddy available to use the equipment.
“So if dem know that we na growing enough paddy to use de machine why dem build de place and put de machine there?” the farmer asked. “Dem put it there for we to watch or for dem watch it and tell we look we do that? Mus’ be that dem do fuh real.”
The same farmer further alleged that several parts were stolen from the equipment at the facility. “Me na care wa dem tell y’all [the media] ’bout de place being too secure and that nothing never get thief. Me live here and me does see wa does happen and me tell you thing get thief,” the man insisted.
However, Seeraj had insisted that all the equipment at the Lesbeholden facility is in place and nothing has been stolen or damaged. An engine, which was reported stolen from the location, is still in its place and weighs over three tonnes, Seeraj had further explained, making it very difficult to move.
When the Lesbeholden facility was commissioned it was expected that farmers would no longer have to travel long distances to access seeds for their crops. Farmers who were present at the commissioning had told this newspaper that they were very pleased with its establishment as it would increase the quality of the seeds. They believed that they would no longer have to “soak the paddy and wind it out; that was too much work.”
“In this place here,” a third farmer stated, “the more them tell you them gonna help you is the more you gonna have to work.”
He believes that over the two years if the same $50 million had been invested strategically throughout the Black Bush Polder area then it would have offered farmers far more benefits than a facility which has never been utilized to its full capacity.
The roads which farmers use to access their farms and transport their produce, he noted, are not in the best condition. This has been a longstanding problem in the area and does not only affect rice farmers.
“The cash crop farmers and everybody else sufferin’ and it is stupid to hear them people this say how them spend so much on something but can’t tell you who it benefiting and how it benefiting them,” the farmer said.
