The Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) wants Public Defender Earl Witter to take up the prolonged insurance payment battle between local coffee farmers and the liquidators of the collapsed Dyoll Insurance Company.

“Next week, we will be writing to the Office of the Public Defender seeking his intervention into the dispute between the trustees and the liquidators, in an effort to get the matter arbitrated so we can have closure to the issue,” JAS president Senator Norman Grant told yesterday’s meeting of the JAS St Andrew Association of Branch Societies (ABS) at Church Street in downtown Kingston.

Grant noted that it has been over eight months since the Supreme Court awarded in favour of the farmers, but that nothing has happened since.

“I know that the joint liquidators have indicated that they will appeal the judgment,” he said. “It is a situation which greatly saddens me, but they have their rights. We have run out of patience and the longer the funds stay there, without a decision being taken, is the greater the chance that by the time a decision is made, there will be nothing left to distribute.”

Grant explained that the legal fees were excessive and were making a huge dent in the US$3.1-million being held in escrow pending a final decision.

“It doesn’t make any sense that we win the battle and lose the war,” he said. “I think that it is an opportune time for us to call on the public defender to step in to try to bring arbitration into the process to bring conclusion to the matter.”

The Supreme Court in July last year gave the coffee farmers the go-ahead to access US$3.1 million due to them, as insurance benefits from the collapsed Dyoll Insurance Company, for damages suffered during Hurricane Ivan in September 2004.

Mr Justice Sykes stated then that the money was for the sole benefit of Jamaican coffee farmers who were insured by Dyoll up to the time of the hurricane.

The funds are currently being held by German reinsurers, Munich Re, after Dyoll filed for bankruptcy early last year, as the joint liquidators, John Lee of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Kenneth Krys of RSM Cayman Islands, have insisted that it should be shared among other beneficiaries, including those in the Cayman Islands.

Following Justice Sykes’ award, the joint liquidators gave notice of appeal, a process which has delayed the payment since. In the meantime, the Government has advanced some $100 million to the coffee farmers.

However, in explaining the advance last July, minister of agriculture Roger Clarke said that although 8,000 to 10,000 farmers would benefit, 75 per cent of them would only get about 30 per cent of the total as it was really the big farmers who would benefit.

balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com