AU: Fruit growers eing denied post-cyclone funding
Despite successfully applying nine months ago under the $20 million Rural Resilience program set up after Cyclone Yasi, the industry has not received any of the $99,000 it was promised.
Grower Cynthia Sabag blames red tape.
"I think it took a bigger toll on me than the initial blow that Yasi did because I just felt that I was beating my head against a brick wall," she said.
"Here I was trying to modify the influence of natural disasters and I was copping, to put it crudely, more kicks in the guts than we did with Yasi.
"The people who are handling this funding, they had no understanding of what farmers were going through and how important this was.
"It came from a meeting of growers affected, it was a grassroots thing and it was just what was needed at the time and it should have happened.
"It shouldn't have got bogged down in a bureaucracy that had no understanding of what it was meant to achieve."
The Queensland Department of Agriculture says the exotic fruits project isn't proceeding because the level of governance required could not be met.
Source: www.abc.net.au