And while the CWU contends with the PBL's million dollar lawsuit for loss of revenue, the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association is facing its own half a million lawsuit filed by BELCOGEN and ASR/BSI.
It's like a "double-benk" to those who take industrial action - but in this case, the stakes aren't as high for the Can Farmers since the government had granted them a little known indemnity late last year.
This was back when the start of La Zafra was delayed and the government wanted to get the sugar season moving as soon as possible. But now, that looming lawsuit might mean that that half a million will come out of taxpayers' pockets. The PM discussed it today:
Hon. John Briceno - Prime Minister
"At that time when we gave the indemnity we felt that we needed to open the crop. Belize needs to produce sugar and sell the sugar so we could get foreign currency and at that time, BSI was saying they're considering suing the cane farmers association and so for us to be able to open the crop as early as possible, I think we were only shut down for less than a week, so we felt that by giving them the indemnity, we would be able to get them to open up and go back to work, which is what we did. With the stevedores, we gave them 1.5 million dollars so I don't know how anybody could speak any differently. We believe that we could still sit down and talk with BSI and hopefully we can get them to move way from talking about any lawsuits."
Courtney Menzies
"But if not you'll have to pay."
Hon. John Briceno
"Well we will cross that bridge when it comes, remember BSI and the government of Belie, we are partners, there are a number of requests that they have for the government including some tax relief on the investments that they want to do, something that we fully support and appreciate their interests in investing in Belize so we believe that we can find a way to solve this amicably."
