San Juan, Jan 18 (EFE).– The Department of Agriculture of Puerto Rico seized more than 500,000 bananas (plantains) from Costa Rica because they arrived sick with some pest, confirmed this Wednesday the secretary of the agency, Ramón González.
According to the official said in an interview with the WKAQ radio station, a total of 6,500 boxes of the fruit were seized, that is, more than 500,000.
The scarcity of this fruit in Puerto Rico is due to the fact that the plants were destroyed by Hurricane Fiona last September.
González explained that the agency has so far distributed approximately 137,000 boxes of the fruit imported from Costa Rica.
However, there were some containers that arrived on the island “with a plague and a little more than 60 containers had to be fumigated, which means that more or less 65,000 boxes of ‘guineos’ had to be fumigated.”
“Of those, 6,500 boxes, when we managed to get them out, they were not suitable for consumption,” he lamented.
Given this, he said that they established a procedure dictated by law through which they are confiscated in the presence of an auditor from the Office of the Inspector General.
González also reported that the seized bananas will be replaced by the supplier, who “was responsible for that banana arriving with a plague.”
The supplier would also bear the costs of fumigation, he said.
González also announced that the local agency has a shipment under inspection and another will arrive this Thursday and next week 30 more wagons. EFE
