Thieves plunder school garden

WESTERN BUREAU:

Wakefield Primary in Trelawny, which came in for much praise by agriculture ministry officials in March for its excellent school garden, has fallen prey to thieves, who raided their farm.

The institution, which was integral to the campaign for the ‘Best School Garden Project’, which was launched in Trelawny in early March, was in the process of fine-tuning their production when the thieves struck.

Principal Michael James said that he and Owen Watson, chairman of the school board, were shocked by the discovery.

“When we visited the farm, thieves had reaped almost all the crops which had matured. They stole cabbage, callaloo, sweet pepper, and string beans,” said a distraught James. “I am most devastated by what has happened to us.”

“With school closed, I was planning to put some vegetables in care packages. I was going to take to students on PATH.”

J.C. Hutchinson, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Agriculture, was so impressed by what he saw when he visited the school last month that he pledged to donate 10 acres of sugar lands to establish an agroponics project and plant strawberries.

“With all these produce that you are planting here, I want to see it going into a breakfast programme because what we have been finding is that roughly 30 per cent of our students come to school in the mornings without breakfast,” Hutchinson said.

Determined to prevent a recurrence of praedial larceny, Dr Petrona Lee, a past student, has committed to providing security cameras to monitor the school garden.