CARONI'S D-DAY NEARS

Wednesday is D-Day for Caroni [1975] Limited and its 9,000 plus workers, by which date they [the workers] must either complete and hand in forms accepting the Government's VSEP offer or face retrenchment.

Acceptance of the VSEP package has been resisted by the All Trinidad General and Sugar Workers Union, as well as by the Opposition United National Congress, which has sugar and allied workers as its political base. The VSEP offer is part of a larger plan by Government for the restructuring of Caroni, which the UNC fears will erode its political base, as well as mean less income from workers' dues for the union. Already, some 4,000 sugar workers have reportedly filled in and returned their forms signifying acceptance of the VSEP offer, and yet more are expected to comply before the Wednesday, April 2 deadline. Minister of Agriculture, Senator John Rahael, indicated last week that Government needed another 4,000 completed forms to reach its target. Oddly, while the Opposition UNC has been arguing against the restructuring of Caroni, which would seek the growing and reaping of sugar cane in the hands of cane farmers, the UNC, while in Government had seen as necessary, not simply the offer of VSEP, but even it seems the closing down of Caroni. Today it has denied that it ever had any such intention.

There is nothing perverse or politically motivated in the decision by the People's National Movement Administration to restructure Caroni and get out of sugar cane production. The approaching end of the Convention of Lome, under which Caribbean [and other Commonwealth] sugar receives preferential entry into the European Union, signals that Government must get out of sugar cane production. The  Administration is not getting out of the sugar industry completely, and instead will still continue to grind sugar at its Usine Ste Madeleine factory, one of two factories operated by Government. The other is at Brechin Castle. But whether or not the Convention of Lome was ending in 2006, preferential entry of sugar to the European Union was certain to be challenged, under the regulations of the World Trade Organisation, in much the same way that preferential entry of bananas to the Union had been challenged by the United States.

Either way, Caroni's days in sugar cane production were numbered by the proverbial sword of Damocles, which hung over the country's sugar industry as an instrument of both globalisation and the upcoming end of the Convention of Lome. And although both problems for the country's sugar industry have been hovering for several years, not once has the leadership of the sugar workers union, following on Government's VSEP offer, given the impression it was prepared to accept that the problems existed and that it was developing strategies to deal either with any WTO threat or life after Lome. The United National Congress, once out of office, has sought to politicise the current Government's plans for the restructuring of Caroni, rather than continue to advance its former position on the 'inevitability' of the situation.

Meanwhile, Wednesday is Deadline Day for Caroni's sugar workers to signify whether they would accept the VSEP offer, including enhanced severance benefits and other perks, or run the risk of being retrenched without the protective financial umbrella of the VSEP package. It is a sad day that instead of a calm, calculated approach to the welfare and future of the sugar workers, there should be so much rhetoric, confusion and downright ignorance of the issue.