Increased resources to speed up DSAP processing

Dairy Adjustment Authority (DAA) Chairman, Mr Patrick Musgrave, announced today that the DAA had increased its Dairy Structural Adjustment Program (DSAP) processing staff in an effort to address the remaining applications.

"The additional staff have been recruited and trained to assist in the processing of the final 8,000 DSAP applications that have proved to be far more complex and time consuming than had been anticipated", Mr Musgrave said.

"These staff will also increase the capacity for the DAA to follow-up with dairy farmers who have been requested to provide additional information to the Authority, so that their DSAP entitlements can also be calculated."

The DAA has issued over 21,000 Notices of Decision, accounting for around 73 percent of all applications from dairy farmers. A further 6000 applications are subject to requests for further information and are expected to be processed readily, once the information is received from dairy farmers. There remains around 2,000 applications that are complex and have required a significant increase in processing time, necessitating the increase in staff. Some of these are the subject of legal proceedings.

The DAA is now telephoning individual dairy farmers, assisting them in the return of the necessary paperwork that accompanies the Notice of Decision. More than 5,000 payments have been delayed because dairy farmers have not completed their forms.

"Extra staff will be telephoning dairy farmers over the coming weeks to ensure that the paperwork required by the Authority is completed, so that their payments can be made as early as possible", Mr Musgrave said.

"These new staffing levels represent a significant increase in our processing and call handling capacity. Importantly the additional staff will mean that the DAA can directly assist dairy farmers in the completion of their Payment Account form and the other declarations, thereby reducing the time between the DAA issuing of a Notice of Decision and dairy farmers receiving their first DSAP payment," Mr Musgrave concluded.

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Contact: Ian Harvey Ph: 03 9507 2315