Alfredo Ortega
Earlier this morning, at a press conference, B.S.I. reps stated repeatedly that they have tried to get BSCFA to the negotiating table with no success. Of course, the bagasse payment won’t be on that table for discussion because B.S.I. says the BSCFA should take their cause to court. B.S.I. wants to discuss the cane purchase agreement, sans an agreement on bagasse. It hasn’t happened so far and likely won’t. As recent as today, there was an attempt to set up a meeting, but B.S.I. says that BSCFA refused to meet.
Via Phone: Alfredo Ortega, Vice-Chairman, Committee of Management, BSCFA
“That is not so…that is not so. According to the Chairman it was a call that was given to him by the DPM but we did not receive any email or any letter that would say anything about it. You know in any negotiation you have to be very clear. We have sent our correspondence to them whenever we are calling them for a meeting and we didn’t receive any correspondence from them. What we have told them is that we want to meet with them but we want to finalize this issue of the new agreement which includes payment for the bagasse. Once we finalize with that we are prepared to sit down with them with any other issue that needs attention. Today we sent a letter to the Prime Minister asking for his intervention in this regard and to see what will happen out of it. We will be waiting on that for his intervention and after that if nothing happens we will be calling another meeting of the cane-farmers to see where we will be taking the next step. At this point we are acting based on the approval of the farmers from last Sunday’s meeting.”
Again, with the stances both sides have taken, it is very unlikely that there will be any meeting between the parties anytime soon.
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