THE Jamaica Producers Group (JP) will today make the jobs of 440 workers redundant.

The large banana producing company said that those to be laid off are mostly field workers who have had little to do since Hurricane Ivan ravaged the company’s banana farms in September. They will receive their final pay cheques today.

“But the company is optimistic that a large number will return,” Dr Marshall Hall, group managing director at JP, told the Observer. “This is not unusual that after a hurricane workers are laid off.”

Of the 360 people to lose their jobs, 360 will be from the Eastern Banana Estate. However, the company said workers will be needed in the coming months, especially on the Eastern estate as only one third of that estate is now being replanted as the remainder was ordered closed by the government banana regulator, the Banana Board, after Moko disease was discovered near the estate.

At the St Mary Estate, 80 workers will go.

“Those workers which we do not expect to bring back in four months we are obliged under law to make them redundant,” Hall said yesterday, noting that the redundancy will cost the company approximately $40 million. The unions have been notified about the lay-offs, he said.

Jamaica Producers said that it would lose between seven and eight months of export earning due to the hurricane – the time it takes to harvest banana. It is expected to cost the company about $1.42 billion (US$23 million) in lost revenues – $496 million (US $8 million) at St Mary and $930 million (US$15 million) at Eastern.

Hurricane damage to the agricultural sector was estimated at $6.82 billion.