ROGER CLARKE, the Agriculture Minister, is promising that the Praedial Larceny Bill will again be tabled in Parliament next month.
The Bill, which proposes, among other things, for a receipt book system for vendors selling farm produce, was referred by the House of Representatives to a Joint Select Committee of Parliament last year, following opposition from J.C. Hutchinson, the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) Spokesman on Agriculture.
Mr. Hutchinson, MP for St. Elizabeth North West, had contended that the Bill could result in the indictment of persons legitimately transporting agricultural produce from their own farms or from farms belonging to their relatives, simply because they did not have receipts.
Speaking yesterday during a service at the Fellowship Tabernacle on Half-Way Tree Road, St. Andrew, to mark 'Farmers' Month' 2004, Mr. Clarke said: "We are going to make sure that we put under heavy manners, those people who continue to reap what they have not sown... our farmers must be relieved of those kinds of pestilence."
The agricultural sector loses an estimated $4 billion annually because of praedial larceny.
Farmers' Month, organised by the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), is being observed under the theme 'We are what we eat, so let's
eat Jamaican'.
Senator Norman Grant, president of the Jamaica Agriculture Society, said his organisation would continue to work with persons and organisations to assist in the further development of the agricultural sector.
"We are not looking at differences, we are looking at what will unite us for the benefit of our people," he said. Dr. St. Aubyn Bartlett, JLP Member of Parliament for St. Andrew Eastern, represented Mr. Hutchinson and Edward Seaga, leader of the JLP, at the service.
