Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Bas­deo Pan­day’s death has un­leashed an out­pour­ing of lo­cal and re­gion­al con­do­lences for the na­tion’s first In­di­an and Hin­du prime min­is­ter. While his con­tri­bu­tion to T&T’s de­vel­op­ment has been be­yond ques­tion, there is one cor­ner of the coun­try where his lega­cy is more com­pli­cat­ed, even in death. It is called Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed.

Sug­ar work­ers like to think Pan­day’s po­lit­i­cal rise and his ul­ti­mate­ly be­com­ing prime min­is­ter in 1995 were built on the backs of their sup­port. They would lat­er feel be­trayed by the very demigod they cre­at­ed as Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed, closed eight years af­ter Pan­day’s rise to pow­er.

Yet, by the time Ca­roni was closed in 2003, Pan­day was well out of of­fice, re­placed by Patrick Man­ning and the PNM two years be­fore in the fa­mous 18-18 dead­lock. How­ev­er, for more than two decades, sug­ar work­ers have pinned the blame on Pan­day for Ca­roni’s demise, many are still ag­griev­ed and oth­ers still find­ing it hard to for­give.

“You have to re­mem­ber that it was on the backs of sug­ar work­ers Pan­day rode that glo­ri­ous road to prime min­is­ter. They felt that he be­trayed them,” Ca­roni’s for­mer CEO De­osaran Ja­groo said.

Pan­day’s rise to promi­nence

That glo­ri­ous road Ja­groo speaks of start­ed when Pan­day served as pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union from 1973 and last­ed over two decades.

Ra­keeb Mo­hammed, who worked for Ca­roni for 23 years as a sug­ar boil­er at Brechin Cas­tle re­called how Pan­day helped to cre­ate bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions for sug­ar work­ers. He said one of the for­mer prime min­is­ter’s ma­jor con­tri­bu­tions was that he lob­bied for es­tate work­ers to get a min­i­mum of 40 hours of work per week. Pri­or to 1975, es­tate work­ers would get work two days a week. He added, “Since his pass­ing, I haven’t heard any­body talk about how Ca­roni work­ers nev­er en­joyed com­pa­ra­ble wages. Pan­day had fought for com­pa­ra­ble wages. If you were an elec­tri­cian in T&TEC, your salary would have been high­er than an elec­tri­cian who worked in the sug­ar in­dus­try. It was Pan­day who ac­quired sick leave, ca­su­al leave, hol­i­days with pay, un­used sick leave with pay and sur­gi­cal leave. If it wasn’t for Bas­deo Pan­day in the sug­ar in­dus­try, no Ca­roni work­er would have had a fridge, TV or gas stove in their house.”

Sam Ma­haraj, a for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary of Ca­roni who served as a UNC op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor dur­ing the fourth Re­pub­li­can Par­lia­ment, wrote this past week of how Pan­day was able to ral­ly a weary sug­ar work­ing force who had lost faith in their pre­vi­ous lead­ers.

Con­tin­ues on page 9

The trade union­ist start­ed with the con­sti­tu­tion where he gave every mem­ber the right to elect their rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Ma­haraj wrote, “Dur­ing his tenure, Pan­day racked up some re­mark­able achieve­ments, in­clud­ing guar­an­teed year-long work for all full-time em­ploy­ees in­stead of the pre­vi­ous six to nine months. In the next cou­ple of decades, sug­ar work­ers’ wages would rise from $5 to $110 a day. Hous­ing loans in­creased from $3,000 to $70,000, en­sur­ing sug­ar work­ers could build de­cent shel­ters for their fam­i­lies.”

A study done by UWI econ­o­mist Dr Dhanesh­war Ma­habir in 1996 found that the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions of sug­ar work­ers had im­proved four times over.

When asked if he ex­pect­ed any re­ward for his ef­forts, Pan­day replied, “What re­ward could be bet­ter than see­ing my peo­ple en­joy­ing a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life?”

Us­ing the trade union as his tool and sur­viv­ing sev­er­al gru­elling po­lit­i­cal bat­tles along the way, Pan­day’s pop­u­lar­i­ty cat­a­pult­ed him to prime min­is­ter in 1995.

A choice be­tween Ca­roni or coun­try?

Pan­day’s rise to leader brought with it an in­creased ex­pec­ta­tion from Ca­roni’s 9,000-strong work­force. For more than two decades they had marched and toiled with him as he climbed the po­lit­i­cal lad­der. But his elec­tion vic­to­ry would bring him face to face with the fi­nan­cial re­al­i­ty of Ca­roni. The or­gan­i­sa­tion had been record­ing loss af­ter loss year af­ter year. Few had a bet­ter seat to watch Ca­roni’s demise than Ja­groo, who worked in the sug­ar in­dus­try as an In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer be­fore be­ing asked to lead the or­gan­i­sa­tion as its CEO. He would be the last CEO of Ca­roni.

He re­count­ed how sug­ar work­ers’ ex­pec­ta­tions of Pan­day couldn’t match the re­al­i­ty of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion at hand. Ja­groo said Ca­roni work­ers, 90 per cent of whom were In­di­ans, ex­pect­ed “much more” from the UNC founder when he en­tered gov­ern­ment. “Sug­ar work­ers were al­ways looked down up­on as a drain on the econ­o­my, even from Er­ic Williams’ days. We were the bas­tard child. It had a psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect on sug­ar work­ers be­cause they al­ways felt that they were un­want­ed chil­dren from all pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments.

“When Pan­day’s time came, they thought their es­teem and their im­por­tance would have been lift­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in­vest­ing in the com­pa­ny and mak­ing it a more sound en­ti­ty. And, most im­por­tant­ly, giv­ing Ca­roni the life­line it need­ed, and that is what did not hap­pen un­der Pan­day so they felt let down.”

As an In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer, Ja­groo would go fur­ther in say­ing his man­age­ment had “the most dif­fi­cult time” in get­ting sub­ven­tions when Pan­day’s UNC was in pow­er. “Bri­an Kuei Tung was the Fi­nance Min­is­ter and he was a bru­tal busi­ness­man and when we vis­it­ed him each month telling him we fell short by $40m or $50m he would scoff at us and tell us to wait in the cor­ri­dor,” Ja­groo re­called.

As the of­fi­cer in charge of li­ais­ing with the union, the for­mer Ca­roni CEO said the frus­tra­tion trick­led down to the fac­to­ry and es­tate work­ers who had sup­port­ed Pan­day from union leader to prime min­is­ter. “Peo­ple would say; ‘But this is my gov­ern­ment. This is the Gov­ern­ment we fought for and we catch­ing we a.. to get we pay on time,’” Ja­groo rec­ol­lect­ed.

In­stead of the com­pa­ny mov­ing to­wards a more sus­tain­able fu­ture, Pan­day strug­gled, like every oth­er prime min­is­ter be­fore him, to make it prof­itable. Wen­dell Mot­t­ley, who served as fi­nance min­is­ter in the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion be­tween 1991 and 1995 pri­or to Pan­day’s ar­rival as prime min­is­ter, told the Sun­day Guardian he (Pan­day) found him­self in a dilem­ma of serv­ing Ca­roni work­ers and the greater needs of the coun­try.

Mot­t­ley ex­plained, “He came up through sug­ar. And there was an ex­pec­ta­tion that as a trade union­ist, he would al­ways pro­tect the work­ers. Mr Pan­day was there­fore seen as un­grate­ful, and the Hin­di word at that, neemakharam, to have pulled the plug on Ca­roni. I was not there but it must have tak­en great courage be­cause of that cross­ing not on­ly his trade union back­ground but al­most of­fend­ing the In­di­an cul­ture by do­ing so. He clear­ly did it be­cause he was prime min­is­ter and prime min­is­ter for all of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

That’s not how Ca­roni work­ers saw it, ac­cord­ing to Ja­groo. “The glo­ry of be­com­ing prime min­is­ter on the backs of sug­ar work­ers was one that they sac­ri­ficed a lot for. They stood by him through­out his po­lit­i­cal life so when he lost the prime min­is­ter­ship they felt let down,” Ca­roni’s last CEO said. “Sug­ar work­ers can be bru­tal,” he added.

The end of an era

On Au­gust 1, 2003, the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion closed the book on Ca­roni. The sug­ar man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny ceased op­er­a­tion. Yet, de­spite be­ing out of of­fice for two years, Pan­day would con­tin­ue to be blamed for the demise of Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed.

Jai Paras­ram, who was a close con­fi­dant of Pan­day, in­sist­ed it was nev­er his in­ten­tion to shut down Ca­roni.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian from Cana­da, Paras­ram said, “I know that he had not planned to shut it down. The last speech I wrote for him was for a Ca­roni Long Ser­vice cer­e­mo­ny. He was prime min­is­ter at the time and in the speech, I wrote that Ca­roni is not shut­ting down and not for sale and the prime min­is­ter read it as it was writ­ten.”

Paras­ram said Pan­day had a plan which en­tailed Ca­roni be­ing the hold­ing com­pa­ny and the satel­lite com­pa­nies each be­com­ing sep­a­rate en­ti­ties would be able to gen­er­ate prof­its. He in­sists, “It would not have been in his po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est to close it down.”

How­ev­er, the num­bers were nev­er in favour of Ca­roni. From an an­nu­al op­er­at­ing loss of $175 mil­lion in 1996, that fig­ure would sky­rock­et to $367 mil­lion in five years.

Mot­t­ley said the com­pa­ny was not sal­vage­able. “Hav­ing seen that rate of de­cline. Hav­ing my­self writ­ten off $2b in debt and very short­ly af­ter­wards to see it was of no avail, I don’t know how Ca­roni could have been switched to be­come that ef­fi­cient,” he told the Sun­day Guardian.

It’s a point even the for­mer Ca­roni CEO agrees with. Ja­groo said, “There were sev­er­al things that were mit­i­gat­ing against Ca­roni. Those things in­clud­ed the cost of pro­duc­tion, poor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, poor re­turn on in­vest­ment and poor yield from a de­clin­ing plan­ta­tion. Then, we had a fac­to­ry that was not ef­fi­cient so the ex­trac­tion rate and the con­ver­sion rate were be­low in­dus­try stan­dards.”

Giv­en the cri­sis Ca­roni had found it­self in, Mot­t­ley praised the lead­er­ship of Pan­day dur­ing those tur­bu­lent years when he sat as both prime min­is­ter and op­po­si­tion leader. He said, “Mr Pan­day was the first In­do-Trinida­di­an prime min­is­ter. He han­dled that tran­si­tion su­perbly. Ob­vi­ous­ly, there must have been ap­pre­hen­sions. He dis­si­pat­ed all of that and in this par­tic­u­lar re­gard his han­dling of what was clear­ly the na­tion­al in­ter­est, he rose above the fray and dis­tin­guished him­self.”

For many sug­ar work­ers, the sen­ti­men­tal and his­tor­i­cal val­ue of Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed, be­ing the very rea­son East In­di­ans came to this coun­try from In­dia, stands above any eco­nom­ic rea­son for shut­ting down the in­dus­try. Pan­day’s lega­cy with sug­ar work­ers is not black and white, but in­stead, a grey area caught be­tween be­tray­al and putting coun­try be­fore Ca­roni. For those who toiled in the fields and worked in the fac­to­ries, Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed may be closed, but they’re still wait­ing for clo­sure.

Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed Loss­es

1996–$175m

1997–$246m

1998–$305m

1999–$223m

2000–$349m

2001–$367m