Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Dr Mahendra Reddy has stated vegetable prices at the containment borders should not be regulated as the second wave of the pandemic was a temporary situation which would pass soon.
He said this in relation to farmers at the border who were complaining about the middlemen taking advantage.
In response to questions, Dr Reddy said they would not make a policy for a short term issue.
“This is a bubble and it will burst when COVID-19 will finish, so any bubble is a temporary thing and this time middlemen are making money,” he said.
“When we had TC Ana and Yasa, people were complaining, vendors were complaining and the farmers were complaining that we are getting low price and the middleman is taking money.
“Middlemen were complaining on the vendors and the consumers were complaining on the vendors and they were arguing that we should regulate the price.”
He said eventually this issue was over until the second wave of COVID-19 hit. He said they had spoken to the people at the border to ensure that the transactions were facilitated properly.
“There was case of farmers in the Naitasiri area asking for fertiliser and chemicals, we took all their orders.
“We organised our transport and our fuel, our driver, collected the chemical and fertiliser from the fertiliser company, South Pacific Fertilisers at expatriate price, took it to the border,” he said.
He said the drivers changed and one of the drivers on the other side took the vehicle and sold it to the farmers and paid the money to fertilising company.
“The farmer said they never got this price because this is the factory price and we had picked up all the other cost.
“So we will do another round once we have collected all the orders within a months’ time.
“We can’t do this every day or every week so we will go and collect their orders and we will do that.”
Dr Reddy said there were no problem with the fertiliser and the chemicals and emphasised that processes won’t be how they were operating in the normal time because of the situation.
