Seafood processing plant to be commissioned next month

The fish processing plant at Mabaruma, Region One (Barima-Waini), will be completed and commissioned in May to deliver seafood to nearby communities and the coastland.
This is according to the Junior Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs Minister, Valerie Garrido-Lowe who told Guyana Times on Monday that works are progressing at the facility.
While the construction is nearing completion, the relevant equipment is yet to be procured.
“We’re trying to get that completed early, at least by the first week in May. We want to finish the construction and furnish so commissioning would be done in early May. We already have our quotations for the equipment,” she stated.
Garrido-Lowe had stated last year that fisherfolks were finding it difficult to sell fresh seafood in the communities so provisions were made through this project to allow persons to process their goods.
Budgeted at $10 million, the initiative is one of three community development projects that were established throughout the region. The coffee and cassava processing projects in Moruca are the two others.
For now, 15 farmers are preparing to transplant some 12,000 coffee plantlets onto one acre of land. But the reaping time for this produce is 30 months and the residents have just completed two months of that time.
“The plants will be transplanted in the ground soon. It’s close to 12,000 trees on one-acre land. The coffee is a two and a half year project. It’s only two months old now. It’s looking good and healthy,” Garrido-Lowe explained.
Earlier last year, it was mentioned that the plants were sourced from Brazil and these farmers will intercrop until they can reap the coffee beans.
“With the coffee, the seeds are being brought from Brazil. NAREI will germinate it and the farmers already cleared their lands to plant. They would have to do intercropping because, with coffee farming, you can reap until next year and a half or two. So they would do intercropping with peas, melon and cassava.”
The aim of this project is to become a coffee producing nation. As such, there have been partnerships with the Social Protection Ministry, the Business Ministry and the Agricultural Ministry through the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) and the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC). The Business Ministry will be responsible for packaging and production.