Cane farmers want their money

With just over nine weeks of the 2005 sugar cane harvest completed, cane farmers are yet to receive a full fortnight’s pay for canes supplied to the Sugar Manufacturing Company Ltd (SMCL). Trinidad Islandwide Cane Farmers’ Association (TICFA’s) public relations officer, Lallan Rajaram, said farmers were normally paid fortnightly for the duration of the crop, which this year amounts to $4 million/per fortnight for all 6,000 cane farmers.

Farmers received payment vouchers from SMCL for the February 13 fortnight, “but the money has not gone in the bank as yet and the company can’t seem to give us an answer when that money will be deposited into the farmers’ accounts,” Rajaram said. Farmers have also not been paid, he added, for the fortnights that closed on February 27 and March 13. Rajaram said in a repeat of last year’s scenario, farmers were forced to borrow money from financial institutions to pay canecutters and other labourers.

Noting that private contractors hired by the company to transport cane had not been paid also Rajaram said the non-payment was “disheartening” because 15,000 tonnes of sugar have already been produced by the company for export to the European Union. “We are asking the SMCL to pay the farmers so that the crop will not be in jeopardy, because if we do not pay the labourers, they will not stay and then the cane may have to remain in the fields,” Rajaram said. Efforts to contact SMCL’s acting CEO Salim Hosein proved futile.