<div id="attachment_108190" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width:310px;"><a rel="nofollow" class="highslide" target="_blank" href="http://edition.channel5belize.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cansino-2.jpg"><imgclass="size-medium wp-image-108190" title="Ezequiel Cansino" src="http://edition.channel5belize.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cansino-2-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225"/></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Ezequiel Cansino</p></div>
<p><strong style="font-size:13px;">While four million dollars may seem like a lot of money, divided between five thousand five hundred dollars, it only comes up to a little over seven hundred dollars per cane-farmer. The Association has been meeting with the eighteen directors to try and find a way around the mandate of the farmers but that has proven difficult. So pay they will, which means that almost immediately there will be termination of employees and the halting of projects. It’s an unpleasant time for an Association which has seen its share of controversy and disputes.</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Ezequiel Cansino, Chairman, Committee of Management, B.S.C.F.A.</strong></p>
<p><em>“We have some clauses in the by-laws that we took into account yesterday because Mr. Ortega, the Chairman of the Orange Walk Branch, mentioned it and read it to the eighteen Directors that he will not be allowing…that the share of Orange Walk Branch be included in that disbursement. But due to the fact that we are seeing that the cane-farmers decided this because of the uncertainty of the beginning of the crop, and the reaction of some of them today that many of them were calling and saying that they will not be accepting the one point five…so the decision of the directors is that we will be disbursing the four million dollars. Seven hundred dollars will maybe last any cane-farmer maybe two weeks. It would be much better, and maybe we would be having more benefits, if this money had stayed as it was already budgeted, because monies that were in the reserve for the next year are included in this disbursement and obviously we will not have any program for the next year, and not even from this year we have. We will be finishing with everything.”</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>As we said, fair-trade has already expressed concern over the disbursement to farmers, and there is little doubt that there are serious repercussions in the works including the sale of sugar under the fair-trade brand. The Association has called a meeting for Friday with directors to see where they go from here.</strong></p>
View the full article
<p><strong style="font-size:13px;">While four million dollars may seem like a lot of money, divided between five thousand five hundred dollars, it only comes up to a little over seven hundred dollars per cane-farmer. The Association has been meeting with the eighteen directors to try and find a way around the mandate of the farmers but that has proven difficult. So pay they will, which means that almost immediately there will be termination of employees and the halting of projects. It’s an unpleasant time for an Association which has seen its share of controversy and disputes.</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Ezequiel Cansino, Chairman, Committee of Management, B.S.C.F.A.</strong></p>
<p><em>“We have some clauses in the by-laws that we took into account yesterday because Mr. Ortega, the Chairman of the Orange Walk Branch, mentioned it and read it to the eighteen Directors that he will not be allowing…that the share of Orange Walk Branch be included in that disbursement. But due to the fact that we are seeing that the cane-farmers decided this because of the uncertainty of the beginning of the crop, and the reaction of some of them today that many of them were calling and saying that they will not be accepting the one point five…so the decision of the directors is that we will be disbursing the four million dollars. Seven hundred dollars will maybe last any cane-farmer maybe two weeks. It would be much better, and maybe we would be having more benefits, if this money had stayed as it was already budgeted, because monies that were in the reserve for the next year are included in this disbursement and obviously we will not have any program for the next year, and not even from this year we have. We will be finishing with everything.”</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>As we said, fair-trade has already expressed concern over the disbursement to farmers, and there is little doubt that there are serious repercussions in the works including the sale of sugar under the fair-trade brand. The Association has called a meeting for Friday with directors to see where they go from here.</strong></p>
View the full article