Last night we showed you Taiwan’s donation of 220,000 pounds of rice valued at a quarter million Belize dollars. It’s a gift to the Ministry of Human Development for distribution to charitable feeding programs. Well, tonight, that gift is the subject of controversy. Rice farmers in the north say they have their own surplus which they are stuck with and this influx of rice is only going to hurt them more.
PUP Shadow Minister of Agriculture Jose Mai told us why the farmers are upset with the Taiwanese and GOB:
Hon. Jose Mai - PUP Shadow Minister of Agriculture
"Actually I was pretty much flabbergasted when I saw the news last night that Taiwan donated 5 containers of rice to the government and handed it to Mr. Martinez's ministry; everybody shares the same views and everybody is surprise at such donation. It comes at a time when our farmers have a large amount of rice in containers in their silos, we have rice that has been harvested from 2 years ago which we are unable to market quickly enough because there's enough - we have a surplus of rice in this country at this time. Every pound of rice imported displaces a pound of rice locally produced. A pound of rice that pays taxes that employees people that creates employment and income to families. Why are they doing it? It's because they have a surplus of rice and that is a form of dumping and many countries do dumping on other less privileged countries like us. Not because they give you something you have to take it you know, you have to weight what are your options, what are the consequences of this. Now this won't leave any farmer broke on the street but we're setting the wrong precedence. Not even the CEO in the Ministry of Agriculture knew this was happening - what kind of a government operates like that? The CEO has no idea up to this evening he still had no idea what rice we're talking about."
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