Jarrette exposes farm flood fraud

SOME farmers are using flooding as a pretext to fraudulently claim compensation for supposedly damaged crops, alleged Minister of Agriculture, Jarrette Narine, speaking on Friday in the Budget debate in the House of Representatives. “There are farmers who go into flood-prone areas and plant there just to get relief,” he claimed. Such areas should be “quarantined” from planting in the rainy season, he urged. His ministry had recently paid out $4.3 million in claims to 495 farmers for flood relief, he said. “False names cause delay.”

Explaining how such fraud was unearthed, he said that even before flooding occurs his ministry’s extension officers had records of what crops farmers’ were planting in each district at a given time. Narine said some persons were fraudulently using the farmers’ badges which certified how much land they had under cultivation. “We are finding people who have two acres of land, and all of a sudden they lose ten acres of pawpaw!” said Narine to the chuckles of MPs. He remarked, “You can imagine that? That is happening.” Narine claimed that the former UNC government used to tell agricultural officers to be lenient on such claims and had said “That’s ‘our’ people; fix them up.”

Other fraudulent claims for flood-compensation were sometimes made where several members of a family were joint-owners of a piece of land and each had his own farmer’s badge. “Four persons are applying for the same produce on the same plot of land. That is happening.” Recalling a farmer who had claimed compensation for dasheen, Narine remarked: “But flooding doesn’t affect dasheen! And the next week after he had received compensation, he was at Tunapuna Market... selling dasheen.” Another farmer had claimed compensation for three-quarters of an acre of cucumber and ochroe, but ministry officials had found only 15 cucumber plants and nine ochroe plants. “He got $74 in total compensation,” jibed Narine, to the amusement of all.

Another bogus claim, he said, had resulted in the payment of just $47. Addressing the Budget, Narine said his ministry had been allocated $452 million for recurrent expenditure and $52 million for development works. This latter included $8 million for water management, $10 million for access roads, $4.2 million for fisheries, and $10.5 million for training for the Youth Apprenticeship Programme in Agriculture (YAPA). He boasted that YAPA had trained youths in areas like rabbit rearing and cocoa farming.