“Come see for yourself” – Reg. 5 REO
─ rubbishes claims from Regional Chair on inactivity of model farm
DPI, Guyana, Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Regional Executive Officer (REO), Ovid Morrison has rebuffed all claims from a recent headline in the Guyana Times stating – “Berbice $200M Model Farm Abandoned- project a waste of taxpayers’ money – Regional Chairman”.
The model farm in Region 5, Mahaica-Berbice is part of the Plan of Action for Regional Development (PARD) for the area and has employed more than twenty youths within the community.
REO Morrison explained that in 2018, approximately $35M was invested into the model farm for “land clearing and land preparation of seventeen acres of land, on drainage and irrigation, on fencing, on establishment of a pig pen, two fish ponds, purchasing of thousands of coconut tree seedlings, plantain and banana suckers and fruit trees”.
A further $15M was approved by the RDC for expenditure on the farm but those monies are yet to have been spent.
However, the Guyana Times report quoted the Region 5 Chairman, Vickchand Ramphal purported that $200M had been spent on the model farm and that it had been subsequently abandoned.
Morrison has openly invited anyone wishes to visit the farm to see for themselves that these claims are false and that it is fully functional.
Additionally, the Region 5 administration stressed that Ramphal is “flat out lying” when he said that $200 Million was spent on the farm. The regional administration believes that Ramphal and his cohorts took photographs of an area not under cultivation to forward their agenda.
Ramphal also made claims that the RDC did not approve of the farm, which the REO has revealed to be yet another fabrication. Morrisson claims that the RDC approved the farm in both 2017 and 2018 at budgetary meetings, both of which Ramphal absented himself from.
As it relates to the productivity of the farm to date, cash crops and vegetables were sold to residents in Linden. The Region 5 administration even took excess produce off the hands of other farmers from within the community and sold their produce during a visit to Linden paying them paid them their monies for their sales on return.