Ramesh takes up another civil rights cause

Former Caroni (1975) Ltd sugar workers and their families are once again on the warpath, this time in defence of their homes, which the Government is threatening to sell because of their inability to meet their mortgage commitments to the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Committee (SIL-WC). The Sugar Workers Action Committee (SWAC) claimed the former VSEP recipients were literally robbed of their jobs at the sugar company last year. “Many families are living in the wilderness of fear and despair, and many of us are on the brink of starvation and vagrancy — the Government is now targetting our homes,” SWAC said.

Based on a forced VSEP package, the Trinidad and Tobago Civil Rights Association, in a release, said “the workers have an entitlement to agricultural lands to pursue activities in pursuit of their continued ability to earn a sustainable livelihood of which they are being denied.” It added that the VSEP package also entitled the former Caroni workers to adequate training/retraining in order to access jobs, but this too has been denied them. According to the release, “Sugar workers are barely eking out an existence through no fault of our own and now comes this ‘wicked’ Government all set to put us on the street,” the release added. To this end, SWAC has carded a public meeting for Sunday at Naparima Bowl in San Fernando from 2 pm, where attorney Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj is expected to disclose a plan of action to stop the Government in its tracks.