Bonus up in smoke

GRASS FIRES that are cropping up across the island and spreading to canefields are burning holes in the pockets of sugar workers.

President of the Sugar Industries & Supervisors Association (SISA), Edwin O’Neal, made this assessment following a fire that levelled a canefield at The Belle Plantation in St Michael yesterday.

Based on a Green Cane Incentive Scheme introduced in 1976, every time a canefield goes up in flames, monies that could go into the pockets of workers shrink. Payment is made to reapers who cut and transport the green canes, which remains a type of bonus to them, even as the industry has moved into mechanisation.

“Yet again agriculture [is] under threat; you are taking money out of their pockets,” O’Neal told the DAILY NATION. (TSG)

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