-RPA supports GRDB’s actions

THE Guyana Rice Development Board (GRBD) has intensified pressure on rice millers who owe above five per cent of outstanding payment to farmers across the country.Farmers have, for many years, complained bitterly about millers failing to pay farmers for paddy provided. As such, the GRDB has found it necessary to intensify its actions against those

delinquent rice millers who, according to GRDB General Manager Nizam Hassan, have owed rice farmers since 2015.

The Rice Factories (Amendment) Act 2007 states: “the licensee’s total debt owed to producers shall not, at any given time, exceed five percent of the licensee’s gross turnover for the preceding calendar year ending on 31 December (inclusive of that date), unless the licensee notifies the Board in writing as soon as the total debt owed by the licensee to producers exceeds the level specified above, and gives the Board the reasons for this.

“Upon being notified, the Board gives the licensee written approval (subject to any conditions that the Board thinks fit) for that total debt to exceed that level for a specified period, not exceeding three months from the date of the approval; and at the end of the specified period, the total debt owed by the licensee to producers (should) no longer exceed that level”.

Hassan, in a telephone interview, said the millers who owe in excess of five per cent payments will not have their 2016 operation licence.
Added to that, until the outstanding payments are made, millers who owe above five per cent will be banned from exporting their produce. This is intended to help rice farmers get their payments.

Farmers have, in the past, resorted to many measures, including protesting, in order to receive their money. Farmers even explained that they had to employ other methods in order to gain a passive income. Some have even expressed anguish at having to lose their belongings because of failure to repay loans owed to banks. This, they said, was because millers owed them, in some cases, millions of dollars for paddy they had provided the millers.

General Secretary of the Guyana Rice Producers Association (RPA), Dharamkumar Seeraj, said he welcomes any action taken by the GRDB to assist farmers in getting paid.

Seeraj also said that farmers have been owed since early last year, hence it is time they receive payments owed to them.