Everyone’s at serious risk from stolen food – Charles Jr
Minister calls on Jamaicans to step up fight against praedial larceny
Published:Wednesday | May 3, 2023 | 1:26 AM
EVERY JAMAICAN is at risk of eating contaminated meat or farm produce sprayed with chemicals and is, therefore, unsafe for human consumption. And so everyone is at risk and should be committed to the fight against praedial larceny, according to Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Pearnel Charles Jr.
Charles Jr, who was making his contribution to the Sectoral Debate in Gordon House on Thursday, declared that the callous thieves did not care about the state of readiness of the food for consumption or the great risk to the health of the general population posed by their illicit activities.
“This is not a national security issue only,” he declared. “When somebody comes on to your farm and steals produce, they don’t know if you sprayed it the night before. When somebody steals your cattle, steals your goat, they don’t know at what stage of readiness it is to be consumed. They don’t care. So it is a public-health issue, and we recognise it as such and call on the country, every MP (member of parliament), every minister, every senator, everyone in Jamaica, to get on board to resolve the scourge of praedial larceny.”
RECEIVING PRIORITY ATTENTION
For this reason, Charles Jr said the issue of farm theft is receiving priority attention. For more than 10 years, the overall annual cost of praedial larceny in Jamaica has been conservatively estimated at $6 billion.
“We have a lot of work to do when it comes to this challenge, and I just want to assure the country that this is priority ... be assured that things are being done,” the minister declared.
“I just want to assure the country that we have a very deliberate strategy to frontally attack praedial larceny. We are completing now this submission that I spoke about some weeks or months ago, and that submission has been sent off to Cabinet,” he shared.
Charles Jr pointed to some other initiatives being pursued by the Government.
“We have trained our police and will continue to train them. We had nine training sessions conducted by JCF (Jamaica Constabulary Force) personnel across all 19 geographical police divisions, and 44 police personnel were trained on how to effectively investigate praedial larceny cases and prepare case files,” he advised.
“A total of 58 public-education initiatives were completed, 130 farmers have been sensitised during a series of sessions islandwide, and we had eight episodes of support and partnership, with our radio programmes only focused on praedial larceny,” Charles Jr said.