Tonight, peace and calm prevail in the north, and life is coming back to normal. Very soon BSCFA members are expected to start making their first official deliveries of the season at the Tower Hill factory. The BSCFA Orange Walk and Corozal branches were scheduled to start at 6:00 pm and will make deliveries until 6:00 am tomorrow.
It's a sigh of relief for the cane farmers who can start to earn their living, and for the entire population north of the New River - who knew that a serious level of civil unrest would begin if the farmers went another day without a signed commercial agreement.
The confirmation that one was signed came at around 10:30 pm - when both government and the cane farmers sent out pictures of the signing of what we're calling the Yo Creek Compromise. Shortly after 11:00 a visibly fatigued Prime Minister gave a quickly put together address to the nation to say that a compromise had been reached. He explained the difficult path from last week Thursday's compromise agreement to last night's signed addendum:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"On Thursday, January 4th, the government managed to broker a deal between both BSCFA and BSI. As with any agreement, the devil was in the details. It was expected that an agreement would be signed early this morning, but late last night, the parties could not agree on the scope of the work that was to be conducted by Mr. O 'Brien, and the parties reached a stalemate once again. After the deadlock could not be brokered by 2p.m. today, I sanctioned both parties and their lawyers to sit in a room and not to leave until we have an agreement."
"Now we have an agreement. I'm happy to announce that the ZAFRA, as we know the sugar cane season, can now commence normally with all sugar cane farmers' associations delivering and the mill processing at optimum."
