Last Thursday, we showed you what Shawn Chavarria, the Director of Finance at Belize Sugar Industries, had to say about their extended commercial disagreement with the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association.
As viewers are aware, Prime Minister Briceno and his agriculture team had to get personally involved to end a strike that happened at the beginning of the last crop season at the end of December. It was a costly delay for the industry, which contributed to thousands of tonnes of sugar cane that were left in the fields at the end of the season.
The interim agreement that the PM and his team brokered to end the strike has come to an end, and once again, the industry is on the precipice of another impasse between the BSI/ASR and the BSCFA.
Yesterday, the leadership of the cane farmers association granted an interview to our colleagues at CTV3 News, and here's a snippet of their remarks, including a request for the Prime Minister to intervene again:
Andy Westby, Chairman, BSCFA Council of Management
"We asked serious intervention by the government to deal with this agreement so that we could have one in place for the next crop to come. This morning we had the Prime Minister and we had Minister Abelardo Mai and other officials of government and we had a healthy discussion based on the negotiation and also on our fair-trade premium and the sugar act. We know the Prime Minister is looking forward to once for all, because we have a long time negotiating and we haven't come to an agreement. We are at square one and even worse. The intervention of the government is for us to seriously sit down so that we could have an agreement in place for the next crop."
Javier Keme, Financial Director, BSCFA
"As the chairman said we have reach to ground zero again just like at the beginning then we suggested the intervention of an independent mediator to assist us in finding a solution forward. Their response to that is that we are mature enough to dialogue and reach a favourable position between the two parties, but in our view we have exhausted that possibility and hence this morning in our meeting we presented that option to the government of Belize which they embraced as a good possibility of going the way forward. So that is one of the good news we can share that there is light at the end of the tunnel which seems that there is a way forward with this negotiation with the intervention of the government."
