Sugar cane harvest starts Thursday

HARVESTING of the 2004 sugar cane crop is due to begin on Thursday, according to Wayne Innis, chairman of  Virgo Consultants Limited, (VCL) the group officially appointed by Government to oversee  operations. It was previously announced that harvesting would officially begin on January 15, aimed at producing 75,000 tonnes of sugar, but the VCL announced on Friday that it would start one week earlier as contracts have already gone out to owners of mechanical harvesters and to those farmers interested in cutting canes, Innis said. The canes targeted are those in fields owned by the former Caroni (1975) Limited which have already been burnt, maliciously or otherwise, so that the Usine Ste Madeleine Factory (the only one that would be engaged in grinding operations) would be fully supplied with cane for the start of the crop.

Already several fields have been set on fire and if the canes are left lying around for a greater length of time, they would lose their sucrose content, so they must be taken to the factory without further delay, Innis said. From January 15, Usine would begin to accept Farmers’ Canes on the basis of the Weight System instead of the Quality Cane Syndrome, which had been previously bandied about the place when Government first announced the Restructuring Programme of the Industry earlier in the year. At a meeting between VCL and the various cane farmers organisations in the country at Sevilla Club last week, disorder broke loose when Trinidad Islandwide Cane Farmers Association (TICFA) sent information that they were no longer interested in managing 80 percent of the weighing scales, which they had been allocated by VCL. At that meeting the Cane Farmers Association of Trinidad and Tobago (CFATT), through its general secretary, attorney at law Dave Persad, submitted that what was necessary to ensure that the crop would be effectively run was to re-introduce a restructured  Cane Farming Department, similar to the lines of the one that was existing at Caroni for the last 40 odd years, and this would “be of major assistance in ensuring that the crop would be meaningfully run.”

Since then, however, VCL had written the CFATT offering them to manage the weighing scales, and the response to this invitation would be conveyed to the VCL today at another meeting between the two groups. In the meantime, the crop would be officially commissioned on Wednesday at 9 am on the compound of the Usine Factory, by officials of VCL, and Minister of Agriculture Jarette Narine is expected to be present to deliver the feature address. Also on the agenda, prayers would be offered by the three major religious groups in the country — Christian, Hindu and Muslim — for a “successful and trouble-free crop in the interest and welfare of the country, moreso, in the area of meeting its international obligation, with special reference to the European and USA Quota,” according to Prem Nandlal, the chairman of the Sugar Manufacturing Company Limited (SMCL) — the group appointed by Government solely for the purpose of producing sugar. In that regard, the SMCL is now looking for a CEO with the necessary qualification to manage the affairs of the Company, moreso as the crop is due to begin this week. The person acting in that position at the moment is Clarence Rambharat, the former Corporate Secretary of Caroni (1975) Limited.