Tougher crop laws likely

TOUGHER LEGISLATION to punish crop thieves is being drafted.

Making the disclosure yesterday, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Esworth Reid said tough penalties were coming for people who reap what they did not sow, in legislation that was in “a very advanced stage” of drafting by his ministry and the Chief Parliamentary Counsel’s office.

Reid said young people could be discouraged from going into agriculture by the level of praedial larceny as well as by crop invasion by menacing troops of monkeys, who were “joining forces with some unscrupulous human beings to reap havoc on the agricultural sector . . .”.

But he promised the Ministry of Agriculture would do “all within its power to protect and develop” the sector. (GC)

Please read the full story in today’s Midweek Nation, or in the eNATION edition.