Gov’t proposes to lease land to Wales workers

The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) has decided to make lands available to workers of the Wales Sugar Estate for them to become self-sufficient in farming practices.

According to the Government Information Agency (GINA), this decision comes as government continues to explore feasible alternative ventures and follows a proposal made through the Wales Estate’s Manager, Devendra Kumar to the workers. It is expected that the lands will help the workers to become self-sufficient.

“The kind of projects that we have earmarked for that just to remind you, is in the area of rice cultivation, possibly aquaculture, the establishment of orchards and dairy farming. As far as that goes, where we are talking about dairy farming and orchards, we’re looking at the possibility of setting up juice processing facilities and pasteurisation facilities here at Wales Estate to process the juices, as well as the dairy products,” the estate manager explained.

Meanwhile, approval has been given by the Board of Directors of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) for 14 workers from the Wales Estate to access lands by lease to cultivate sugar cane. These workers will now be recognised as farmers supplying sugar cane to the Uitvlugt estate.

According to Errol Hanoman, Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo, a number of other workers had applied to be a part of this venture.

“The size of our cultivation (land) is 3356.1 hectares or some 8000 acres. Now that’s a lot of acreage to deal with, that we are talking about and developing something like that; our thinking is we would like our employees of GuySuCo who have an interest in this particular kind of development, if it is that you would be interested in coming on board, if we were to, let’s say make available lands to you if you would come on board, not as individual farmers, but if you would like, form yourselves in co-op societies, how would that idea come across to you?” Kumar asked.

One cane harvester expressed his interest in the government’s proposal by doing cattle ranching but opted on going after the venture through a co-operative society. Others would like to see systems in place to ensure that they have significant guarantees and access to markets even after venturing into farming.

(Modified from GINA)