Rahael: 4,000 more must take VSEP,
or else it’s retrenchment
Agriculture Minister John Rahael stressed yesterday that there would be retrenchment at Caroni if Government did not get the necessary numbers to accept the Voluntary Separation Package.
Rahael announced that to date 4,000 workers had applied for VSEP. But Government needed at least another 4,000 to go in order to reach its target of having just 1,000 employees working at Caroni. (Caroni currently has some 9,000 workers).
He was speaking at the post Cabinet news conference at Whitehall. There is just one week to go to the April 3 deadline for acceptance of the VSEP package. After that, retrenchment would follow. The retrenchment conditions are not as generous as those offered under the VSEP.
Rahael said Government was determined to carry out its restructuring process on the company which is uneconomic and which loses $600 million a year.
It is understood that Government is planning to bring a motion on Caroni today in the Parliament.
Dealing with statements made by Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday that government’s decision to restructure Caroni was rooted in racism and discrimination, Prime Minister Patrick Manning said whenever Panday and his colleagues found themselves in political difficulty they resorted to the race card. He said this was why there was so much divisiveness in the society.
He said no matter how hard Government tried to discuss the Caroni issue dispassionately, the UNC was “determined not to withdraw from that dangerous course of action (of using the race card)”.
The Prime Minister stated that enough had been said about the financial position of Caroni for everyone to accept that something had to be done. He said many people were describing government’s actions (to restructure the debt-ridden state company) as long overdue.
He recalled that when the government in 1975 bought over the factory, people were saying even then that the days of sugar were numbered and that government should not have made this purchase. He said contrary to what the UNC was saying Government was not closing down the sugar industry.
Rahael quoted from several reports to prove that the UNC had planned to offer a VSEP to workers and that the ATSGWTU had accepted this. A June 30 1999 Report done for the UNC Government by Ernest and Young stated that the union “was not averse to a plan where the workers receive part of the VSEP in the form of land”.
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"Rahael: 4,000 more must take VSEP,
or else it’s retrenchment"