THE Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) board of directors chair Nitya Reddy says staff have already started preliminary work with orders being placed for essential items to facilitate the repair of the Rarawai mill.
The Rarawai mill incurred significant damage following a fire on September 17.
“We’ve got three generators hired, which are providing electricity for our essential services,” he said.
“All our homes in Ba, we’ve got about 100 homes, and there would be at least a community of 1000 people, our staff, our employees, they have been given power from the very night.”
He said there was extensive damage to some of the important cable networks.
“It is not a matter of just going up to a supermarket shelf and buying those cables. So, our team is now in full action mode to go and source those cables.
“We have already had some preliminary discussions with local manufacturers, and we are also looking at the options from overseas.”
Mr Reddy said a total of 550 people were employed at the mill prior to the fire.
“We have made a commitment through the full support of the Government that we are going to deploy them as much as we can.
“At this stage, we think we’ll find some alternative, productive employment for all of them. There is bound to be some reshuffling of personnel between Lautoka and Ba mills, and we’ll be talking to the union representatives to facilitate that.”
