Dear Editor,
I am wondering how profitable the new rice cereal mill will be which is being built at Anna Regina, and where the markets will come from. This area is noted for being waterlogged and soggy during rainy season. It is said that when this project is completed it will employ 200 persons. This cereal mill will cost the government and taxpayers a huge amount of money, and I cannot foresee it employing 200 employees; the largest rice milling complex which is Caricom Rice Mills Ltd does not employ that number of workers and it sits on some 30 acres of land with sections such as silo, mechanical workshops, stores, accounts department, time-office, managers offices, cp bond, aeroglide dryers, hess dryers, main cleaning plant, parboiling plant, boiler, laboratory, mills, rice bond, bulk bond, etc.
To my mind this was a political gimmick to win Essequibian votes. A large number of our people live below the poverty line and many were jobless under the previous administration, and something should be done to create employment for the young people of this region. But in the wider context, the government has a duty to use our agricultural potential to help alleviate the suffering which is endemic among Essequibians. This region can create and sustain a stable and ever-expanding, strong, diversified manufacturing base, but we must do things in a carefully planned and systematic way, not in an ad hoc manner as we see with the rice cereal factory.
Many cottage industries which were built in the past without any feasibility study being done, are either not being used at all or are producing below capacity. Some turn out to be white elephants because they were poorly sited where they could not access the raw materials or produce, and these were an enormous waste of resources and taxpayers’ money.
This region is in dire need of an agricultural bond to store fertilizers, pesticides and chemicals for the farmers’ 31,500 acres of rice lands, and an agricultural bank where the farmers can access loans on easy terms and conditions. In today’s world farmers holding shares in agribusiness companies is gaining popularity among planners and practitioners of corporate social responsibility; these should be the number one priority in this region.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
