Farmers affected by any break­down of a sugar mill will be compensated.

This was confirmed by the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) chief ex­ecutive officer Graham Clark after the recent breakdown at the Lau­toka sugar mill had affected many farmers and other stakeholders.

The assistance programme was announced by the Mr Clark yester­day.

Mr Clark said the welfare of the farmers, lorry drivers and other key stakeholders was vital there­fore undertaking an assessment of the situation led them to come up with a contingency plan.

“There had been a request from the farmers to have a look at the impact of that on their operations,” Mr Clark said.

“We understand that farmers have to employ cane-cutters, they have to incur costs of food, and they have their lorry drivers.

“If you break the chain, there is a cost of that on the operations.

“After the Lautoka mill break­down, we undertook an assessment as to how we could assist the farm­ers,” he said.

“We have come up with an as­sistance programme which will compensate for the financial costs incurred due to a mill breakdown.

“In respect of any notification by FSC of a mill breakdown that will be for longer than six hours, we will institute a formal assessment of the situation which would be jointly carried out by FSC staff and affected cane farmers.

“Then we will determine the volume of any affected cane, the impact in each sector, in the cane yard, and lorry drivers waiting to offload.

“Based on this, a break down pen­alty will be paid by FSC at a rate of $5 per tonne of affected cane.

“This will be paid by FSC in the normal cane payment system,” he stated.

Mr Clark said this would address the many hardships faced by farm­ers during mill breakdowns.

Edited by Mohammed Zulfikar

Feedback: yogesh.chandra@fijisun.com.fj