PARLIAMENTARY PARTY
INVESTIGATES SUGAR,INDUSTRY
PLANTERS' GRIEVANCES,- f
(By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Australian-N.Z. Cable Association.) Received Last Night, 5.5 o'clock. SYDNEY, March 21.
A wireless message from, the Mokoia states that the Parliamentary party visited Lautoka on Thursday in charge of Mr T. K. Sidey, M.P., as the result of the courtesy of the officers of the Colonial Sugar Company. ■ Thig proved to be" one of the most instructive visits of the tour. In two days they travelled over 120 miles on a narrow/gauge railway along the coast, the' line passing through alluvial plains, great areas of which were planted with sugar cane. Sugar is Fiji's biggest crop, and New Zealand is her biggest customer. 'There is now no indentured labour in Fiji. The field workers are paid 2s 6d per day, against Is before the war, and find their own food. Many Hindoos lease blocks of five acres,, and grow their own cane. ' All the planters are guaranteed for the 1920 crop at the average of 15s per ton for cut cane delivered at the mill free over the Company's railways, crops average about 25 tons to the acre. » The planters are anxious that the New Zealand Government should negotiate with the Company for at least a three_year3' agreement, in order that the price will be guaranteed to the planters for that, period, which represent the cropping life of the sugar cane.
It is stated, as a result of the ira/certainty owing. to the short twelve months' agreement, that some are refraining from planting and no new developments are being undertaken. The planters contend also that.it is to the interest of News Zealand consumers to have the price fixed for a longer period. Before the war the price was guaranteed for five years. The Company's Lautoka mill is one of the world's largest. After the cane is fed into the elevator, it ia not touched through the whole process till it is sewn into bagsj and lifted into trucks.
The Parliamentary party will now probably reach Auckland on March 25.
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Wairarapa Age, 22 March 1920, Page 5
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339PARLIAMENTARY PARTY Wairarapa Age, 22 March 1920, Page 5
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