Tabaquite farmers Chadwick Ramlal and his brother Fedlis had added stress yesterday, after thieves struck and stole about 400 pounds of cabbage from their garden at the Navet Dam Access Road.
The brothers were already counting their losses, which ran close to a million dollars, when acres of cabbage and tomato crops were destroyed by flood waters on Tuesday in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Bret.
Ramlal told the T&T Guardian yesterday that he went to his garden at about 6 am only to discover his garden boots missing from the place he had left it. That’s when he thought to himself that something was not right.
“I say no I left my boots right here. When I do go in my garden and check I see that all my cabbages gone and they use my own garden boots to go in and reap it,” Ramlal said.
“This is so distressing, I already lost so much already and now this? These people have no heart.”
Ramlal, however, noted that the majority of cabbages, “if not all,” would not even be healthy for sale, noting he believes that the produce was stolen to sell on the wholesale market.
“With how the flood waters come and cover down the garden the cabbage would have collected mud inside of it and that is not good. It may be sold in the market, so people need to be careful and look out,” he added.
His brother Fedlis said in his 35 years of farming it was the first time that they had been robbed of produce.
“That never happen here and you could say it’s a lifetime I doing gardening. This real sad. People don’t know what they does do.”
Ramlal said he notified police officers at the Brasso Police Station.
An officer, who wished not to be identified, later told the T&T Guardian they had already received information that may lead to an arrest.
Millions in losses
Meanwhile, one of Central’s largest cucumber farmers, Timothy Baptiste, 25, said his entire cucumber and sweet pepper crops were destroyed. As he raised the dead vines in the air, Baptiste showed the devastation.
“I lost about $80,000 in vegetables and may need about $20,000 to start back up.”
Tabac Road farmer Martin Badal said where his garden was there are about 49 other farmers and altogether they had estimated their losses to be at $.5 million. He said the farmers lost crops such as hot peppers, sweet peppers, pimentos, tomatoes, cucumbers, pole beans, caraille, chive and pumpkin.
“It’s the fist time in 20 years we have seen flooding like this here. We all sell wholesale to mainly the Macoya market, Chaguanas and Port-of-Spain. We have been hit very hard,” Badal said.
On Wednesday, Agricultural Minister Clarence Rambharat met with the distressed farmers, where he outlined what needed to be done in order for them to get compensation.
The farmers said that whilst they hope for the speedy handout of compensation packages, they are bracing for more flooding due to the heavy showers experienced yesterday and feared that if they should be flooded again they “will lose more.”
“At least the compensation may not be the value of our produced lost, but it will help us start over but what happens in the event he are hit again? Then we will lose everything,” Badal said.