Cozier area to be re-organised, developed
MINISTER within the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Alli Baksh has announced that the Cozier area on Essequibo Coast will be reorganised and developed to boost the national grow more food drive. Speaking to scores of farmers at Dartmouth on Wednesday, he said the land, which is very fertile, will be drained and designed in a block system so farms will not be flooded.
According to the minister, the Cozier farming area lies in a low basin and will take large sums of money and lots of work to drain and impolder the some 5,000 acres farming area.
Baksh said the Government, during last year, invested huges sums of money to desilt and clear clogged drainage canals in the Cozier area and farmers had promised to ensure that the silted canals were kept free of weed and grass but have failed to keep their promise and the canals have become blocked again.
Farmers told the minister that access dams in the Cozier area currently have large pools of water.
One farmer said he has 40,000 dry coconuts to be transported from his farm to the Pomeroon Oil Mill but cannot do so on a muddy dam.
However Baksh undertook to let the region have a D6 bulldozer within the next month and to have work done on the access dams in Cozier during the dry season.
Regional Engineer, Mr. Perman Singh, who was present at the meeting, told the minister that the Drainage and Irrigation (D&I) Department has a plan for the drainage network of Cozier.
Chairman of Paradise/Evergreen Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC), Mr. Cornel Damon also informed the minister that the Dartmouth Farmers Cooperative Society, which is now defunct, had done work on 1,090 acres in the Cozier Agriculture Scheme.
Damon explained that, after the society ceased to exist, farmers were allowed to apply for individual plots and so started the cultivation of rice in the scheme which was earmarked for non-traditional crops.