Pineap­ple farm­ers who have chopped down more than 300 acres of for­est re­serve in Table­land are ex­pect­ed to be charged by the po­lice fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Ramb­harat him­self has al­so launched a probe in­to “the com­plete fail­ure of the Forestry Di­vi­sion to com­bat squat­ting in the for­est re­serves.”

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Ramb­harat said he was ap­palled at the for­est de­struc­tion.

Heavy rains put a damper on spray­ing op­er­a­tions at agri­cul­tur­al es­tates near Bun­see Trace, Pe­nal on Tues­day as farm­ers con­tin­ue to grap­ple with crop loss­es from an in­fes­ta­tion of lo­custs.

The lo­custs, which are about a cen­time­tre in length, have been gob­bling fields of cas­sa­va, peas, ochroes and bo­di near the forests of Morne Di­a­blo.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat said spray­ing start­ed since Sun­day.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents of Pe­nal Rock said not all the ar­eas are be­ing cov­ered.

Ex­ten­sive spray­ing has start­ed in a bid to erad­i­cate swarms of lo­custs which have al­ready de­stroyed sev­er­al acres of crops at Mendez Vil­lage, Pe­nal.

Res­i­dent Hem­raj See­lal said the lo­custs have been feed­ing off trees in the forests since Jan­u­ary but over the past month, they have start­ed de­stroy­ing fields of peas, cas­sa­va, ochroes and bo­di.

“They eat­ing up the ochro trees. We are fac­ing a lot of loss­es right now,” See­lal said on Mon­day.