The Sugar Cane Growers Council (SCGC) is working with sugarcane growers to ensure COVID-19 safe measures are being followed when crushing begins.

Council CEO Vimal Dutt said farmers understood the importance of maintaining the safety precautions as it would affect the rest of the crushing season.

“As far as COVID-19 safe measures go, we will be following all of the rules that the Ministry of Health and our authorities have put out and we are working closely with our farmers to make sure that they are following them,” he said.

“We will definitely be providing them with that guidance and we will come to that when crushing starts.

“At this point in time we are trying to sort out the crush date which is subject to the restrictions that are in place and when things become more flexible or normalises, we can move accordingly.”

He added the current wet conditions experienced in most parts of the Western Division were favourable for farmers as they prepared to harvest their crops.

The three mills are expected to start crushing this month.