FROME, Westmoreland – Chairman of the Jamaica Sugar Cane Growers Association (JSCGA), Allan Rickards, has called on the Government to unleash the security forces on arsonists who are being blamed for the loss of more than $106 million worth of sugar cane in this parish since November.

“We are asking the minister of agriculture for a special request to be made of the Ministry of National Security and through them the police high command to concentrate an effort in the cane-growing areas of the Frome factory, because we believe that it will be a deterrent to the illicit cane fires,” Rickards told the Observer yesterday.

Several thousand tonnes of cane have been lost in the parish in recent months, due to arsonists, who have been reportedly setting fires to canefields across the parish.

A significant amount of the cane, Rickards said, was destroyed before the start of the 2008/2009 crop at Frome earlier this month.

“A great deal of that loss was incurred in the case of cane burnt before the factory was started, and if you burn cane before the factory starts you know that all of it is going to be wasted,” the JSCGA chairman explained.

He argued that the security forces, “with all they other stresses that they have” should regard the burning of cane fields as life-threatening, because the fires are in fact threatening “economic life.”

Vice-chairman of the Westend Cane Farmers Association, Lucius Jackson, who is supporting Rickards’ call, told the Observer that since November he has lost more than 170 acres of cane, due to arsonists.

He said other farmers in the parish such as Neville Samuels, Marvin Salabie and Carlton Nembhard have lost a total of more than 150 acres of their sugar cane crop.

But it is the Frome Estate operated by the state-run Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ) that has borne the brunt of the illicit fires.

The latest fire to affect the estate occurred on Monday night when more than 1,000 tonnes of its cane went up in flames in the Shrewsbury area of Westmoreland.

Other sections of the estate’s vast sugar cane cultivation have not been spared the wrath of the arsonists.

The island’s sugar sector, particularly the Westmoreland area, has long been affected by the illicit burning of cane.

During the 2005/2006 crop alone, illicit cane fires in that area resulted in an estimated loss of $350 million.

And last crop there were roughly 1,000 illicit cane fires in the area, which reportedly resulted in losses surpassing the previous year.

Over the years, a number of initiatives, including education programmes tailor-made to sensitise residents in the sugar belts about the negative effect of illicit cane fires on the industry; a reward of $225,000 by the SCJ for information leading to the arrest and conviction of persons responsible for the illegal burning of cane and the threat of deploying the security forces to patrol cane fields have not yielded the desired results.

Jackson yesterday argued that due to the importance of the sugar sector to the economic life of Westmoreland and its environs, “everything” must be done to protect the industry.

“The sector is too important to thousands of people in the region for it to be allowed to die because of these unscrupulous persons,” he charged.

It is estimated that during the cropping season, Frome Sugar Factory – the island’s largest sugar-processing plant – generates roughly $35 million weekly in the economy of Westmoreland alone.

Meanwhile, despite the illicit fires plaguing the sugar crop, the Frome Sugar factory is targeted to produce 49, 828 tonnes of the sugar this year.

Last crop, Frome, the island’s largest sugar factory, produced 53,728 tonnes of the sweetener from the milling of roughly 661,000 tonnes of cane.

Frome Estate is among the five state-owned factories up for sale to the Brazilian firm, Infinity Bio-Energy.