Cane farm­ers are re­ject­ing Gov­ern­ment promise to pay $57 mil­lion as fi­nal pay­ment of the out­stand­ing two tranch­es of a grant by Eu­ro­pean Union as com­pen­sa­tion fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed sev­er­al years ago.

So said at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, who is rep­re­sent­ing the for­mer cane farm­ers in the mat­ter.

An­nounce­ment of the pay­ment was made yes­ter­day by the Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­istry.

Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved the pay­ment of more than $57 mil­lion, which rep­re­sent­ed the re­main­ing two tranch­es of the pay­ments.

It stems from an agree­ment be­tween the for­mer PP gov­ern­ment and the Eu­ro­pean Union.

Un­der the first tranche, more than 3,000 farm­ers were paid in ex­cess of $24 mil­lion.

The farm­ers were in­formed of the lat­est pay­ment yes­ter­day by per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the min­istry, Joanne De­o­raj. They are ex­pect­ed to be in­formed of­fi­cial­ly in writ­ing, the min­istry added.

How­ev­er, af­ter speak­ing with the lead­er­ship of the cane farm­ers union, Ramdeen said the at­tempt to pay $57 mil­lion as fi­nal pay­ment was a be­tray­al as the for­mer cane farm­ers were be­ing owed more than $100 mil­lion.

"It is a be­tray­al of the cane farm­ers," he in­sist­ed yes­ter­day, adding: "My clients are cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject­ing the of­fer of the Gov­ern­ment. They are ready to go to court and those pro­ceed­ings are go­ing to be filed by next week."

Ramdeen said the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al must ex­plain why they were not ho­n­our­ing an ear­li­er promise to pay the full amount in two tranch­es.

Ramdeen said the $57 mil­lion rep­re­sent­ed on­ly half of the to­tal pay­ments due.

He said the le­gal ac­tion would be ini­ti­at­ed in a few days.

"We are go­ing to make this Gov­ern­ment pay through the court be­cause they don't want to do so vol­un­tar­i­ly.

"The cane farm­ers will ac­cept noth­ing less than the $103 mil­lion owed," Ramdeen added.