ELSIE Croal likes to be of service. There are so many people in need, she says, “So you have to recognize that if you’re in a position to help, you should.”
She has now retired, after spending practically all of her working life at the Ministry of Agriculture. This petite, feisty, well-mannered and quite disciplined woman was persuaded to do this interview with the Chronicle on the sidelines of an outreach organized by the Ministry of Education in New Amsterdam, Berbice.
Being an independent consultant following her retirement, the Education Ministry had requested that she be the scribe at the consultation.

Beginning of a career
Ms Croal began her working life as an agricultural assistant in the Agriculture Ministry, before moving up to become an agricultural officer, then the production manager, then the Deputy Chief, and finally Chief Crops and Livestock Officer!
She was born at La Grange, West Bank Demerara, but moved to Georgetown as a child, where she resides to this day. Back then, when the Church ran most schools, she attended St Angela’s, a Roman Catholic school that is still in operation on Thomas Street, just up the road from the Georgetown Hospital, here in the city.
From St Angela’s, she attended the Bishops’ High School (BHS), after which she read at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica for her natural sciences qualifications, which encompassed zoology and chemistry.
A couple of years after she had returned to Guyana and had taken up employment at the Ministry of Agriculture, Ms Croal received a Canadian scholarship to read for her Masters in horticulture at the University of Guelph. When she returned to the Agriculture Ministry, she ‘really enjoyed’ being part of what was going on in the country.
At the same time, she became curator of the Botanical Gardens, and was partly responsible for the maintenance of several government compounds, such as The Residence (Castellani House), the compound of Parliament Buildings, State House, Ministry of Finance, and other places.
Ms Croal took early retirement from the Agriculture Ministry because she wanted to try doing different things. She started doing consultancies, and, after a while, joined the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) at the Office of the President.
“So I was working on the PRSP, doing a lot of consultations countrywide, while we wrote up the PRSP strategy document that had to go to the World Bank. That document was approved by the World Bank, and as a result of that, Guyana got some…well, it’s not direct money; it’s that we were allowed to retain some of the money that we owed in debt and utilize it for things like education and things that would reduce poverty in the country,” she explained.
“And that was quite successful, because, if you look at the annual budgets, certain sectors — what you call the social sectors — the money assigned to those sectors was increased every year, and as a result of that, we got all these schools in different parts of the country; and lots of other things were done with that money.”
The PRSP was very interesting, she recalls, because the consultations exposed the amount of poverty in the country, and made her realize how well off she was in comparison to other people. “And it really made you want to help do something to alleviate the problem,” she added
Since the completion of that project a few years ago, Ms Croal has been working as an independent consultant. She is also the coordinator/secretary for the Guyana Musical Arts Festival Inc., originally started in 1952 by the Guyana Music Teachers Association, which organizes biennial festivals of classical music. The most recent festival was held in April 2011.
She has also been a member of Guyana’s leading choir, Woodside International, M.S., for many years, and has served on the choir’s executive committee in the past.

Unusual fruits
“One thing I am pleased about: You see how many fruits we have available now? Things like mamee and other unusual fruits we never had?” Long ago, she recalled, she was part of a team that distributed free fruit plants during Agriculture Month.
“And we produced a lot of different fruits, and after a certain number of years, you could see the difference in the markets. So before Agriculture Month, we would bulk up and produce thousands and thousands of plants. And people could collect whichever plants they want(ed).”
Explaining what it was like to work with the government all those years, Ms Croal said: “When you are a public servant, you are representing the government. I have worked with numerous ministers…You are there to carry out government’s policy. So once the policy is laid out, you tailor your programmes to match it, and implement (them). It’s very straightforward; quite easy.”
For those persons wishing to enter the agriculture field, Ms Croal had this advice to offer: “Get some training. Training is available at the Guyana School of Agriculture. If your family is involved in agriculture, you will have the basics; but get some technical training, because that’s the way forward; that’s how you increase your productivity.”

Law abiding
“I am very conservative, in that I like things to go according to the rules and regulations. I am very law-abiding, and I expect people to be like that. If you are working with me, I will do my best…, but I expect you to follow the rules,” Ms Croal expressed.
Also, she is not happy about the amount of late coming she sees around workplaces today. “I didn’t approve of that kind of thing.”
Her children, Christopher and Amanda, have had to get used to their mother’s hours of work. She often worked late, as she preferred to finish what she had to do in the office rather than take home her work.
Every year, Ms Croal would try to take the kids somewhere out of Georgetown for a little vacation. “I take them around Guyana, outside of town, because I find so many people know Trinidad, New York, and they’ve never been to Kaieteur.”
She may not have always been able to spend the amount of time with them as other parents, but she definitely made good use of the time they had together. Her husband of many years, Mr. Kenneth Croal, died last year. He worked in the field of rice cultivation, and at one time they were both employed at the Central Agricultural Station, now NAREI, at Mon Repos. In fact, that’s where they met.
Ms Croal thinks some people may not like her because they get the impression she is too strict. “But I don’t think so (that she is too strict). I believe in standards.”