Indigenous Fijian landowners who have blockaded a cane railway line for two weeks are demanding a goodwill payment of 53-thousand US dollars before they agree to negotiate a renewal of the lease.
A spokesman for the landowners at Sorokoba in Ba, Samuela Kautoga says they have agreed to negotiate a short term lease of seven years after the goodwill payment is made.
He says they would not lift the railway blockade until the payment is made because the Fiji Sugar Corporation had been using the railway on their land since the lease expired in April.
More than one-thousand tones of harvested cane has dried up and rotted because it could not be taken to the Ba Sugar Mill and farmers have stopped further harvesting.
The general secretary of the National Farmers Union, Mahendra Chaudhry, who visited the landowners, said the blame lay with the Fiji Sugar Corporation for not negotiating the lease renewal when it was expiring.
But the Sugar Cane Growers Council has hit out at Mr Chaudhry's actions.
The council's chief executive, Jaganath Sami, says instead of using his influence to get the landowners to re-open the railway line for the orderly harvest and transport of cane, Mr Chaudhry has supported the landowners and inflamed the situation.
