Over 100 sugar cane out-growers in Njeru Municipality, Buikwe District are stranded with sugarcane after managers of GM Sugar Factory delayed to buy it from them.
“Our cane is almost drying up but the company is giving priority to their own sugar cane. We have to wait for their trucks to offload before they can think about ours and this can take another week,” Ibrahim Namabunda, a sugar cane out-grower told Daily Monitor over the weekend.
However, Eddy Poya, the chairperson GM Sugar Factory says the out-growers were warned against harvesting the cane since the company still had a lot of cane in stores, but they did not take heed.
“It is true, trucks for out-growers are not being offloaded, but we have nothing to do no until the company cane is harvested,” Mr. Poya says.
Jacob Odur, a transport manager at GM Sugar Factory says they are making arrangements to see how out-growers can be helped.
“We know what they are going through, but it was their fault and we doing our best to help them out,” he says.