 The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Cooperatives have procured safety equipment for officers of the Predia Lassany Unit. The protection equipment includes snake gaiters to maximise the level of protection against snakes and other hazards likely to be encountered in the field. The unit also received expandable batars to be used as a compliance tool and defensive weapon by the officers. Head of the Predia Lassany Unit, Pancras Albert, expressed gratitude to the Department of Agriculture for acquiring the equipment. I'm happy that we have that because every day we go out there encounter problems with snakes. It's just lucky that nobody has gotten bitten from a snake yet. So I want to thank you sir again and the Minister involved at large too because he is part of the ministry for this equipment that we are going to receive this morning. Permanent Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Cooperatives, Barry Morfalesia, stressed the importance of ensuring the officers of the Predia Lassany Unit are adequately equipped to better serve and protect farmers as well as other stakeholders. Currently they have about 14 members of staff and they are located at three different districts that is Swizzel, Miko and Ridgeford. They have three offices from which they run their operations from. With those three officers and those 13 members of staff they are expected to cover the entire island and deal with all the cases of Predia Lassany that come before the desk. In 2019 there were just about 524 cases but it seems during the spike in COVID there was also a spike in Predia Lassany cases so you saw an increase of about 49% to 729 cases which means last year they had to deal with an increase of over 200 cases. The effectiveness of the unit depends on the protection of the officers so if the officers are armed properly and protected properly it means that they can serve us better. The Permanent Secretary reaffirmed the Department of Agriculture's commitment to protecting the well-being and welfare of their human resources to allow them to more efficiently execute their duties. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, I am Anisia Antoine reporting.