NFU will carry on regardless...

[posted 2 Feb 2010,1300]

The National Farmers Union will continue to function normally despite attempts by the regime to stifle the Union.

The move to remove check-off facilities for cane growers is a hostile act and a gross denial of human rights and the rights of cane growers to freedom of association and to political affiliation of their choice.

It is also in gross violation of ILO Conventions 87 and 98 which provide for freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, respectively. Both conventions have been ratified by Fiji.

NFU views this unprovoked move by FSC and the regime as an act of hostility - the latest in a series of arbitrary moves aimed at marginalising cane growers in an industry in which they have a 70% stake.

First, the regime dismantled the Sugar Commission of Fiji, the Fiji Sugar Marketing Ltd and the Sugar Cane Growers Council – all institutions set up under reforms ushered in by the Sugar Industry Act 1984 to ensure accountability and transparency in this important industry and to grant cane farmers, as major stakeholders, a legitimate voice in its affairs .

Reforms enacted under the 1984 Act had ushered in more than two decades of peace and stability in an industry that had been plagued by exploitation, uncertainties and mistrust for almost a century.

In one fell swoop, and acting arbitrarily without consulting with the recognised representatives of the growers, the regime has wiped out all the good achieved thus far leaving a failed and bankrupt Fiji Sugar Corporation to dictate to the industry.

They justify the latest move, to cut off the financial base of growers’ organisations, by claiming to de-politicising the sugar industry! This is ironical considering that it is the government that is playing the biggest politics with cane growers.

The regime has systemically marginalised cane growers and rendered them voiceless; dismantled industry institutions that ensured transparency and a consultative approach; has stifled growers’ organisations leaving them completely defenceless at a time when they are being subjected to huge losses and injustices – who is playing politics in the industry?

It reminds one of the iniquities of the Girmit era when cane farmers were completely left to the mercy of the mighty CSR.