Cedric Johnson, Gleaner Writer
Rickards
WESTMORELAND:
CHAIRMAN OF the All-Island Cane Farmers Association, Allan Rickards, is warning the Government that the association will be forced to take legal action to get the Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ) to honour its contractual obligations to the farmers.
"We as cane farmers have been honouring our side, but the Sugar Company has not been keeping its side," Mr. Rickards charged at a meeting of the association's management committee in Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland, recently. He said the cane farmers' association had already retained the services of attorney-at-law Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas to argue the farmers' case.
According to Mr. Rickards, the factories owned by the SCJ have been unable to take the required amount of cane from the farmers due to malfunctioning machinery at the factories.
In lambasting SCJ management for allowing what he described as gross levels of inefficiency at the factories, the cane farmers' association chairman repeated his call for the present management to be replaced.
