Earlier we told you that the sugar cane season had opened. But, the final hurdle that stakeholders in the sugar industry are facing right now are the sugar roads. They are in bad condition because of last year's rains, and the Government of Belize starting working on them from last week Monday.
They are far from being totally fixed, and today the Vice Chairman of the Cane Farmers Association's Committee of Management, the budget set aside to fix the road is clearly not enough. Here's how he explained the situation where one road was left unfinished after only 30% of it was fixed:
Reporter
"Has the relevant authorities communicated with you to tell you what their position or how are they currently conducting the works on the roads?"
Alfredo Ortega - Vice-Chair, BSFCA's CoM
"I call yesterday one of the engineers and I spoke to him about a particular road where there are an amount of farmers that have a lot of cane there that could be harvested and he told me that the funds available for that particular road has depleted and that happen to many roads according to him that were given under contract because of the situation of the road."
"It's a pity that that is happening because we thought when we had the meeting and we were promised that works would be done on the road. We thought that works would be done to at least reach 90% to fix some of those roads."
Reporter
"At this point what percentage of the roads has been worked on?"
Alfredo Ortega - Vice-Chair, BSFCA's CoM
"I would say about 30%. We didn't knew that they had proportionated by road and amount of funds designated to those roads, so that really move the goal post to a different direction that we thought that they were working on this road; we were happy that at least it will be fulfilled at least 90% of it and the other 10% well farmers could have in one way or the other find stones to fill the their little pieces that are needed but the situation presently is that they reach sometimes 30% - 40% of the road and then they move to another place. The burden remains there because farmers are unable bring their product on those sugar roads."
According to Ortega, the farmers have been trucking rocks to the different spots where roads are in the worst conditions, and they've been dumping them in the potholes. Government said that they budgeted an unprecedented 2.5 million dollars for these repairs.
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