Banana Sqabble

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – Opposition Leader Arnhim Eustace has dismissed as “flimsy excuses” the government’s explanation for the late ordering of oil to spray banana trees infected with the dreaded black sigatoka disease.Banana fields are expected to be sprayed from Wednesday, months after the disease began to wreck havoc with banana farms across the island.

The delay in aerial spraying has been attributed to a mix-up at the Ministry of Agriculture and recent storms across the Caribbean and the United States.

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has said that agriculture officials “dropped the ball” on the disease, which has further curtailed banana cultivation even as the sector struggles to recover from last November’s Hurricane Tomas.But Agriculture Minister Montgomery Daniel said he accepts “responsibility” but not “blame” for the situation.Daniel explained that his staff did not send the requisite documents to the Ministry of Finance until July, although monies were released since April.

“As Ministry of Agriculture … I have to accept the responsibility but I am not going to accept the blame. … The Ministry has its officials. They have their work to do. They must do their work,” Daniel said over the weekend.

But Eustace said he was rejecting the excuses because legislators had approved the national budget that made provisions for the Ministry’s programme for controlling the disease.

According to the budget, agriculture officials are to control the disease through ground crew operations, at least six aerial spray cycles this year, and implement an effective management programme for the control of black sigatoka and moko, another disease affecting the country’s banana cultivation.

“I mean the Ministry of Agriculture wrote this last year to be effected this year and (it) was passed in the budget in January. So, the Minister only [knew] the other day that they weren’t implementing it?” Eustace said.

“All that is foolishness. They did not manage the programme properly. They didn’t do it as they said in the Estimates and the Ministry of Agriculture must take the full blame for that, including the Minister and by extension the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Eustace said, adding that the government should not blame civil servants for the situation.

“… if I am Minister of Agriculture … I would want to know why the fields are not being sprayed. And I’ll make sure that they are being sprayed because I know how important the industry is to the country,” said Eustace.

“The government dropped the ball. They drop the ball,” the former prime minister said, adding that  because of the situation, investments in the industry after Hurricane Tomas, which destroyed 98 per cent of banana plants, is wasted.

“The fertilizer government gave to farmers, the income support they gave to farmers, all of that is now come to naught. … and then our reputation as a banana producer, because you are not hearing that complaint  in St. Lucia and Dominica. It is here alone,” he said.In June, St. Vincent exported bananas to the United Kingdom for the first time since Hurricane Tomas.

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