Sugar Cane Growers Fund Chief Executive, Raj Sharma is advising farmers in this cane payment that normal deductions will be made.

Sharma says several calls and enquiries have been made by growers about whether there will be a deduction for loan repayment.

In the May cane payment, no deduction was made to allow farmers to prepare for harvesting.

“This year in May, we received almost $6m of cane proceeds and of that at the request of the government and as well at the request of the Sugar Cane Growers Council our board agree for preparation of harvesting – let’s not deduct anything. So we only received $138, 000 and refunded almost $6m to the farmers.”

Sharma says this is why the payment due needs to be collected.

However, if the grower is facing difficulties in meeting personal commitments, Sharma says they can call their district office and consideration will be done on a case by case basis.

Sharma also highlighted that in the last payment some of the growers came forward stating that the Fund should have deducted and a few of them reverted and paid cash from their share of proceeds.

SCGF received over $4.2m of which over $1.8m is taken in repayment and over $2.3m is refunded.

He adds from the total of 3, 061 growers’ payments received, 761 had no deductions as their annual repayments were met in past payments.