Mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion at the high­est lev­el con­tributed to the clo­sure of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd says Seuk­er­an Tam­bie, pres­i­dent of the Cane Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.And up to this day, he said, no one wants to come out and say the ex-sug­ar work­ers have been wronged.

Tam­bie, who was ap­point­ed an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor by for­mer prime min­is­ter and for­mer pres­i­dent of the All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union Bas­deo Pan­day, dis­put­ed claims by for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira that Ca­roni Ltd was shut down be­cause of 30 years of con­sis­tent loss­es from an in­dus­try that was in­tend­ed to con­tribute to the GDP of the coun­try.

She was speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on a Ca­roni Ltd mo­tion brought by the then op­po­si­tion in De­cem­ber 2009.Tam­bie in­sist­ed that for 30 years the PNM gov­ern­ment had made a prof­it of $2,000 on a tonne of sug­ar."The is­sue here is not that the sug­ar in­dus­try was mak­ing a loss; it was mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion to the high­est lev­el."

Jen­nifer Ker­na­han, an­oth­er Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tor, had said the past ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­par­ent­ly was de­ter­mined to shut down Ca­roni Ltd and used the ex­cuse that it was a drain on the econ­o­my to the tune of $200 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, and that the pro­duc­tion price of sug­ar in Trinidad was un­eco­nom­i­cal.

She coun­tered that for­eign ex­change earned by the in­dus­try from ex­port kept 10,000 rur­al sug­ar work­ers and 15,000 cane farm­ers in gain­ful and pro­duc­tive em­ploy­ment, and that a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of over 300,000 was de­pen­dent on the op­er­a­tions of the in­dus­try for their eco­nom­ic sur­vival.

For­mer di­rec­tor: Pan­day­seen as a failed leader

Mean­while, for­mer Ca­roni Ltd di­rec­tor Dr Mah­fouz Az­iz dis­missed the idea of a po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy be­hind the shut­down of the sug­ar in­dus­try."I don't think any one gov­ern­ment was re­spon­si­ble," Az­iz, who served as a di­rec­tor be­tween 1996 and 2000 said. "In some ways, the Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) al­so want­ed to di­ver­si­fy the com­pa­ny. They all tried. It was not a de­lib­er­ate thing.

"How­ev­er, af­ter the clo­sure, there were those who want­ed to grab the re­sources and do what they want­ed. I have no qualms about say­ing that."Az­iz said Pan­day, when he was in pow­er be­tween 1995 and 2001, want­ed to di­ver­si­fy Ca­roni Ltd away from sug­ar but did not have a strong vi­sion."He was seen by sug­ar work­ers as a failed leader."

Az­iz said dur­ing the NAR's time in of­fice, from 1986 to 1991, Ran­jit Singh, an econ­o­mist, served as chair­man of the board of Ca­roni."They came up with a plan by Win­ston Dook­er­an, a min­is­ter at the time. It was the most com­pre­hen­sive plan for the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of Ca­roni."They start­ed and then gov­ern­ments changed (the PNM won the 1991 gen­er­al elec­tion) and the project fell apart." He said the PNM had a tri­par­tite plan, in­volv­ing work­ers, the gov­ern­ment and the com­pa­ny, to write off a $2 bil­lion Ca­roni Ltd debt.

"Since then, there has al­ways been some ef­fort, even when Dr Kei­th Row­ley was agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, to do things for Ca­roni."

'Sug­ar pro­duc­tion­in­creased un­der Row­ley'

Az­iz said un­der Row­ley sug­ar pro­duc­tion ac­tu­al­ly in­creased af­ter a long time."He had a lot of man­age­ment sup­port. A large part of the man­age­ment in Ca­roni were of PNM per­sua­sion."Az­iz said lack of cap­i­tal to de­vel­op di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion projects led to the fail­ure of the com­pa­ny."I re­called be­ing asked to do a live­stock mas­ter plan for Ca­roni and fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung giv­ing $50 mil­lion to de­vel­op it.

"Five months lat­er, I got a call say­ing they need­ed $30 mil­lion to pay work­ers' salaries."Az­iz said Ca­roni was not on­ly grow­ing sug­ar and did not have on­ly sug­ar work­ers' salaries to pay."The com­pa­ny was fat be­tween se­nior and low­er man­age­ment. They need­ed to trim there a whole lot."He said Ca­roni al­so op­er­at­ed var­i­ous oth­er fac­to­ries and es­tates, out­side of sug­ar.

"There were co­coa es­tates, Ca­roni was one of the largest own­ers of wa­ter buf­faloes."He said the com­pa­ny, which al­so owned ten per cent of Plipde­co and had 69,000 acres of land, was rich in re­sources and could have been a very suc­cess­ful one to­day.As for whether pil­lag­ing had any part to play in the com­pa­ny be­ing un­prof­itable, Az­iz said, "I would not say there was no cor­rup­tion at Ca­roni. But it was not the cause of its clo­sure."

Cries of hun­gry chil­dren

Pan­day said there were strong cul­tur­al ties sug­ar work­ers had to the in­dus­try."They worked in it for over 170 years, from since they were brought from In­dia to work as in­den­tured im­mi­grants on the sug­ar es­tates."And it was a cul­ture shock, cer­tain­ly, when it was tak­en away from them."Pan­day him­self came from the bow­els of the sug­ar cane in­dus­try in the South. "My fa­ther was a cane farmer and my moth­er helped him cut cane. I my­self cut cane."

Talk­ing about the hum­ble cane cut­ters he led for years, Pan­day, in a rare show of emo­tion, was al­most on the verge of tears.He re­called the labour strikes for bet­ter wages when Ca­roni was run by Tate & Lyle and lat­er, the PNM gov­ern­ment.When he came in­to the in­dus­try in 1973 the wages of a sug­ar cane labour­er was 63 cents an hour and $5.04 cents a day. Women worked for four or five months a year and got $600.

"While they worked they would take cred­it in the vil­lage shops and when the crop start­ed, they would pay it off. (These busi­ness­es, cre­at­ed around the in­dus­try, al­so went bank­rupt with the in­dus­try's clo­sure.)"The homes of many of the cane labour­ers were mud huts cov­ered with carat leaves. It was an enor­mous strug­gle.

"When the cries of the hun­gry chil­dren in the homes got loud­er, the men would go in the rumshop."It's the women who would lis­ten to their cries. When it got so loud it burst like thun­der in their heads they stood up."Pan­day said it was women cane cut­ters who fought with him for bet­ter pay.

Nir­van Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent of the All Trinidad Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (AT­G­WU) in his ad­dress to for­mer sug­ar work­ers at Cen­tral's first ever Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions at the union's head­quar­ters at Rien­zi Com­plex in June, said they could nev­er for­get that the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion re­fused to raise the wages of sug­ar cane work­ers.

"Can we ever for­get that in 1978, then prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams sin­gled out sug­ar work­ers and an­nounced there will be no fur­ther in­creas­es for them un­til Ca­roni Ltd made a prof­it?"Yet, the same rule didn't ap­ply to oth­er state en­ter­pris­es like BWIA, Tel­co, Is­patt and oth­ers."

Child labour­ers

Pan­day re­count­ed his strug­gles to re­move chil­dren from the cane­fields, a fight that was against even the sug­ar work­ers them­selves.He said in 1973, a fe­male labour­er would be paid $3.99 to cut and bun­dle one tonne of cane. "Both moth­er and fa­ther would go to the fields and car­ry their chil­dren to help them. These chil­dren would be be­tween eight and 11.

"The moth­er would cut the cane and the chil­dren would bun­dle them. A lot of chil­dren got no school­ing."When I came in, I em­barked on a tremen­dous strug­gle to get them out.It was dif­fi­cult be­cause the cane work­ers them­selves didn't want it."Ca­roni Ltd, ig­nor­ing Pan­day's pleas to get the chil­dren out of the fields and in­to the schools, threw that back in his face, say­ing, "We didn't put them there."

"I re­mem­ber, as a lawyer, threat­en­ing the com­pa­ny that if chil­dren were in­jured in the cane fields they were li­able to work­men'scom­pen­sa­tion."He said to­day, some of the chil­dren of cane cut­ters who were tak­en out of the fields are pro­fes­sion­als, doc­tors and lawyers.John Jaglal, first vice-pres­i­dent of the AT­GW­TU was a child labour­er in the cane fields. He lived with his grand­par­ents, for­mer In­di­an in­den­tured im­mi­grants, in Chase Vil­lage, un­til his moth­er took him away.

"I start­ed to work with my moth­er in 1958 in the Wya­by Sec­tion in Cara­pichaima. I was 12."I cut cane and was a cart man for bi­son and mule carts. I lived with my moth­er, step­fa­ther and sis­ters and stopped school in Sec­ond Stan­dard to work."Jaglal re­mem­bers his moth­er lat­er tak­ing him to a Ca­roni Ltd man­ag­er who wore short kha­ki pants.

The man­ag­er gave him a cop­per badge mak­ing him an of­fi­cial labour­er with the com­pa­ny."I con­tin­ued cut­ting cane for 14 years work­ing for my own mon­ey, over $1 a day."Jaglal's last job was as a sling man. "When the trucks came with the cane and the crane picked up the bun­dle, I burst it with a long rod."

When the in­dus­try was shut down, he con­tin­ued work­ing in the union, where he be­gan as branch pres­i­dent for the Wya­by Sec­tion.

Al­co­hol, drugs,bro­ken homes

Large num­bers of cane labour­ers were not as for­tu­nate as Jaglal. They were em­ployed on­ly sea­son­al­ly with Ca­roni, had no ed­u­ca­tion or skilled train­ing, and suf­fered tremen­dous­ly when the in­dus­try was closed."Most of them used to work six months while in the in­dus­try and scrounge out a liv­ing for the rest of the year. They would do all kinds of odd jobs to sur­vive," Pan­day said.

"They had learnt to live off their wits and con­tin­ued to do this af­ter the shut­down of the in­dus­try."For­mer UNC sen­a­tor, Dr Sharon Gopaul-Mc­Ni­chol, a psy­chol­o­gist, speak­ing on a Ca­roni Ltd mo­tion in Par­lia­ment in De­cem­ber 2009, said she ex­pressed con­cern when she was told of the shut­down of the in­dus­try while she served as min­is­ter in the Trade Min­istry un­der the PNM.

She said she warned such a move should not take place with­out se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the im­pact on the work­ers.She told Par­lia­ment in 2009, "I would like this Gov­ern­ment to take stock of the so­cial­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly trau­mat­ic ef­fects that this has had on the en­tire Cen­tral area."Com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies have been dis­rupt­ed as a re­sult of this move. Many for­mer sug­ar work­ers were hos­pi­talised be­cause of the trau­ma it took on their fam­i­lies.

"Let me ex­plain, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, how this can hap­pen. Con­stant un­cer­tain­ty leads to anx­i­ety. When anx­i­ety is not ad­dressed it leads to de­pres­sion. When de­pres­sion is not ad­dressed, it leads to anger, which is man­i­fest­ed in sev­er­al ways."She said, "It could be man­i­fest­ed as anger turned in­ward which is fur­ther de­pres­sion; it could be man­i­fest­ed as anger turned out­ward which can lead to ag­gres­sion, and the ex­treme cas­es you see sui­cide, and that is when the anger turns so deeply in­ward that peo­ple can be sui­ci­dal.

"Sev­er­al per­sons had called me through­out the coun­try who were faced with this sit­u­a­tion telling me how de­pressed they were."I re­mem­ber try­ing to re­fer them to the so called coun­selling that I saw list­ed on writ­ing and on pa­per all over that the Gov­ern­ment was pro­vid­ing, but it was a jour­ney ac­cess­ing the coun­selling ser­vices.

"To­day, some of them are pa­tients on the psy­chi­atric ward at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, while many oth­ers have gone to ear­ly graves in pover­ty from stress-re­lat­ed ill­ness­es."