Karim: Food security a necessity in covid19 era

CHAGUANAS East MP Fazal Karim says that given TT's annual food import bill being well over a $1b, food security assumes ever greater importance especially in the era of covid19 which has decimated world economies and left tens of millions of people unemployed.

In a release on Wednesday, Karim said that individuals have the power to ensure their own food security and that of their families by way of home gardens and small-scale rearing of animals such as chickens, tilapia and goats for a source of meat.

"To this end, I have launched an essential skills training programme on my Facebook Page which gives tutorials on home gardening using containers and grow boxes. We are providing citizens with the knowledge and the raw materials to start-up their own micro agri-businesses or to just grow food to feed themselves and their families during these harsh economic times,” Karim said.

These tutorials, he added, are a continuation of a suite of training programmes delivered over the past five years to support employability and personal development including making face masks, auto mechanics, plumbing, house wiring, tiling, accounting, occupational health and safety and many more.

This follows a series of agricultural development measures introduced at the constituency level to achieve the goals of food security and self-sufficiency espoused in the UNC’s National Economic Transformation Plan 2020-2025.

Karim distributed a wide variety of seeds received from the Ministry of Agriculture and private donors including corn, bodi, pigeon peas, seim, lauki, jhingi, sorrel, pumpkin and melongene as well as fertilizer and pots.

On New Year’s Day he distributed over 5,000 seedlings of bodi, bhaji, cayenne pepper, hot pepper, tomatoes, cauliflower, eggplant, celery, and many other varieties to help citizens start their own home gardens towards planting their own futures.

Karim, a former Tertiary Education and Skills Training Minister in the then Peoples Partnership government, said that the Central Statistical Office placed TT's food import bill at an estimated $5.7 billion in 2019. Of that total, vegetables and fruits accounted for $1 billion and meat and meat preparation accounted for $730 million.

He said the UNC has committed to creating 10,000 new jobs in the agriculture sector, cutting the food import bill by $2 billion and generating another $1 billion in agriculture exports should it form the new government after this year's general election.

And to commemorate the Corpus Christi public holiday on Thursday, Karim distributed over 1,000 packets of seeds to his constituents as he joined with the Christian community in celebrating this important occasion on the Christian calendar.

“On behalf of the United National Congress and my own behalf, I would like to extend best wishes to the Christian community which celebrates the feast day of Corpus Christi on June 11. Christians celebrate the Holy Eucharist on Corpus Christi and all faiths join in this celebration by participating in a long-standing tradition of planting food," Karim said.