AN informal meeting was held between cane lorry operators in Ba and sugar industry stakeholders in the wake of a strike last week which halted sugar production at the Rarawai mill.
Lorry operators had refused to deliver cane into the mill yard, citing issues with the manner in which mechanically harvested cane was given precedence over manually cut crop.
The meeting gave Fiji Sugar Corporation management the opportunity to explain why provisions were in place for trucks ferrying mechanically-harvested cane and manually-harvested cane.
Ministry of Sugar acting permanent secretary Parmesh Chand said the system in place was a fair one and it facilitated improved efficiency.
“We wanted to explain what strategies we have put in place to accommodate billeted cane, which is cut by mechanical harvesters,” he said.
“Mechanical harvesters work faster and there is a lot of money put into harvesters who buy them.
“So if you have billeted cane stuck behind those lorries carrying manually-harvested cane, then the $500,000 mechanical harvester is in the field idle, not earning any income.
“The more this machine gets used, the more efficiency we will bring about and it will lower the cost of transportation and harvesting.”
He said the Sugar Industry Tribunal had allowed mills to reserve a bay for trucks to unload cane harvested by mechanical harvesters.
“It is not to say that people, with manually cut cane, are disadvantaged- there are three bays still reserved for them. Ultimately, we would like to encourage more people to buy mechanical harvesters so we are looking at programs and assistance packages through the Sugar Cane Growers Fund to assist farmers to buy mechanical harvesters.
“This will be using a corporate type arrangement. To do that, we also have to amend the provisions in the Sugar Cane Co-operatives Fund Act so that we can lend to co-operatives. At the moment, we only lend to an individual farmer.”
Last week canegrowers expressed dissatisfaction with what they viewed as unfair practice by the FSC in allowing mechanically harvested cane to be processed ahead of manually cut cane.
Growers feared that if mechanically-cut cane was given priority over manually-cut cane then they could lose out on revenue once the cane quality payment system was fully adopted.
