Mahaica farmers call for urgent response from Govt

Rice and cash crop farmers of Mahaica Creek, Region Five, are at a loss in regard to their next move, because Government’s repeated interventions to assist them have failed.
The farmers have, on a number of occasions, met with media operatives to highlight their plight with the hope that this would attract Government’s intervention.
Guyana Times recently visited the De Hoop Branch Road, Handsome Creek and Byaboo areas, where farmers have decried that one of their main sources of income, rice cultivation, has been hampered by taxation measures implemented by the Government in the 2017 budget.
Farmers have also complained that prices being paid for paddy have decreased significantly, and this has left them like — many others countrywide — facing a dismal future.
One farmer explained: “If you take a truckload of paddy to the mill, a small truck would usually give you an average of 120 to 130 bags of paddy. However, currently, with the paddy bug infestation, we barely make 80 bags from a small truck.”
The rice farmers are also decrying the unfair treatment they get from the millers in the area. Another farmer explained that millers have been given the upper hand in the process, and now farmers have to accept the situation in order to feed their families.
“Say we take 100 per cent to them, they sometimes come back and tell us that 60 per cent is damaged, and (they) only pay us for the remaining 40 per cent. We can’t say anything, because there is no one to say anything to,” he explained.
The Mahaica-Mahaicony-Abary Agricultural Development Authority (MMA/ADA) recently implemented higher rates and rental for the lands. Such works as cleaning of canals and building of dams have ceased, and the MMA/ADA has issued a statement to the effect that no funds are available to continue such works. As such, the farmers who now have to carry out those works out of their own pockets, have been calling for removal of the rates and rental fees.
“I feeling like giving up, because this ain’t make no sense. We not making profit, so what sense this makes,” another farmer told this publication.
Contacted about the issue, Region 5 Chairman Vickchand Ramphal confirmed that no intervention has to date been made by Government.