In a bid to address the labour issues associated with the Sugar industry, the government has rolled out a scheme to allow farmers to buy tractors under cooperatives.

Permanent Secretary for Sugar Yogesh Karan says Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama last year rolled out an incentive where the government funded 21 cooperatives with $2million for mechanical harvesters.

“We have to move away from manual farming to mechanize farming as high labour cost issue is associated with it, if you talk to every farmer the issue is labour.”

Karan says together with this, the government also allocated close to two million dollars for farm implements.

Meanwhile, the Permanent Secretary says more than 40 harvesters have been bought under the cooperatives to date.