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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