THE EDITOR, Sir:

In the wake of an appeal against a Supreme court ruling in favour of coffee farmers, who earlier had their benefit denied when Dyoll went under, the Ministry of Agriculture graciously stepped in and contemplated an offer of $180 million to farmers.

This was done at a meeting in the board room at the Hope Road ministry in mid July 2006, in the presence of Hon. Roger Clarke who chaired, his permanent secretary, Coffee Board personnel and trustees.

A few weeks later, the figure was reduced and subsequently confirmed to be $85 million with $25 million of this amount taking the form of a grant. We hold no brief in respect of what the final figure turned out to be, since any generosity on the part of government is well appreciated by the farmers.

Where we are extremely uncomfortable however, is that there has been no reason given why the final figure fell so dramatically short, when the positive court ruling added so great a cushion in diminishing the government risk.

Even more disturbing to us is the fact that this was done while farmers were, and had to be up until Ivan, fully paid-up (i.e. premiums pre deducted) members of a governmentally compulsory insurance scheme.

Anyway, this is just normal curiosity as to what the reasons for the cut in the originally mooted figure might be.

I am, etc.,

Derrick Simon

Box 2542

Kgn 8