Remigrant rice farmer claims
sabotage
- estimates losses in excess of $10M
Pawan Pharsi returned to Guyana in 2013 and invested in excess of $10M to set up a 25-acre rice farm at Wash Clothes Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara. But after months of substantial monetary investments and intense labour, Pharsi claims that persons have been sabotaging his crops and land.
Pawan Pharsi
“I can’t say for sure who it is, but it is not right at all. I personally worked hard to prepare the land and plant the rice…for months now. I paid some people and together we set up the land nice, nice…but now somebody like they going there night time and they digging deep, deep drains and so on the land.” Pharsi said that the perpetrators, whoever they might be, have also damaged a structure which he erected for the purpose of camping in the fields when the need arises. “Is a 12 by 16 piece of place, and they even break that down and all too. It cost me ah lot ah money to set up the place to how it was,” Pharsi told Kaieteur News yesterday. He said that he became a lot angrier after the person(s) responsible for his losses went on to damaging his actual rice crop, which was almost ready to be reaped. “After so much time and effort, somebody like they go and spray the rice fields, damaging my rice crop… a whole 25 acres…that’s no easy thing, I’m being sabotaged, I don’t know what to do. I came back to Guyana to set things up so that I can move back, but now I might have to replace and rework everything,” Pharsi lamented. “Is barely a small piece of the rice field lef…like two feet or so,” he stressed. The Mahaicony resident told this newspaper that the police have already
A section of the damaged rice crop at Wash Clothes, Mahaicony, ECD
taken samples of the damaged rice plants, so as to ascertain what chemicals were used. “I don’t know as yet which chemicals were used, but the police gone with the samples, so when they finished testing that, I will know.” The Mahaicony resident pointed out that he has sought the assistance of authorities at the Mahaica-Mahaicony-Abary/ Agricultural Development Authority (MMA/ADA) but nothing has so far been done. “Is heavy machinery going on the land and messing up all my earnings, but nothing is being done. I don’t know what else to do,” Pharsi said.
