Holding people back

July 14, 2004

How are we to take the recent words of Kamal, at one time reputed to be one of the most popular politicians around?

Trinidadians and Tobagonians are at present well placed objectively to face the world on even terms once the will and the vision is there, and just at this crucial crossroads when everything possible and positive should be done to enhance that thrust of our population forward, up comes Kamaluddin Mohammed with a mouthful of outdated, anachronistic, divisive and negative claptrap.

In support of a march against crime organised by the Hindu Credit Union (HCU), this is what the great Kamal, according to a newspaper report, had to say:

"...The biggest crime ever committed in this country was the closure of Caroni (1975) Ltd ...those who were responsible for the closure of Caroni will pay for their actions..."

Words to that effect we have most certainly heard before, so here he is merely repeating someone else's view.

Then he continued:

"...Sixty thousand (sic) people were put on the breadline, on the road, and people are suffering, children are crying daily because they cannot get a proper meal. Parents are grieving because they cannot live the kind of life they were living before. By the stroke of a pen their entire routine has been destroyed..."

And he ends by advising the Hindu Credit Union to "buy a modern sugar mill from India," supposedly to get the local sugar industry back to what obtained before.

Nice-sounding, emotionally-appealing words that can certainly serve to rally people to any particular political platform, but words that in effect have little to do with reality and truth, and forces many to question today the integrity of a person whom they previously respected.

In the early '70s when myself and others went into the sugar belt to assist the Sugar Workers' Action Committee in their struggles for modern working conditions and trade union democracy, the entire workforce was put at 10,000 and dwindling rapidly.

The average number of people dependent on the income of a sugar worker was then estimated to be three, thereby putting total dependency at approximately 30,000.

No sugar worker, I can recall, wanted his offspring to be pigeon-holed as he or she was to the sugar industry, which was considered to be archaic and inappropriate for young people who had their whole life and careers ahead of them.

The children of sugar workers back then, some 30 years ago, were being encouraged to educate themselves and move into the professions or into the service sector and the distributive trades. And the evidence is there to show how successful these children have been in this regard.

It is hardly likely therefore that total dependency would have doubled from 30,000 to 60,000 at present. On the contrary, it is likely that the dependency would have dwindled by 50 per cent.

The other variable that has to be considered is that the largest portion of workers in the sugar belt was the plantation workers, ie cane cutters, whose work was seasonal—six months on and six months off.

In the off-season, sugar workers had to find alternative means of survival and were accustomed doing this for decades.

Moreover, with the establishment of the Point Lisas Industrial Estate as a modern sector, many of the sugar workers and their offspring moved into the service sector.

The governments of the past which sited and facilitated the build-up of Point Lisas, knowing full well that the sugar industry was on its way out, must be given credit for their vision.

But Kamal is so blinded today that he does not, nor cares not to, see that he was once part a key member of these governments.

Everyone today can see what has happened around Couva and Chaguanas, which together comprise the most rapidly developing area of T&T in terms of business expansion and residency.

One banker recently admitted that 35 per cent of every dollar invested in T&T is invested in the Chaguanas/Couva area. So for someone to come and suggest to us today that people are suffering and crying daily because they cannot get a proper meal in the sugar belt is to be a stranger to the truth.

This is not to say that there is no poverty in the area. There is poverty throughout T&T, but the point is that the people of the sugar belt stand a good chance as any to seize the opportunities before them and to even create their own opportunities.

There is absolutely no need or desire to encourage people to embrace once again a dead "produce to export" industry.

By all means push the bureaucrats to implement the land distribution as planned, to diversify local agricultural production and stabilise the local sugar production for domestic consumption, but cease the nonsense about buying a "modern sugar mill from lndia" to revert to the days of old.

Woe betide those human dinosaurs within and without the sugar belt who seem hell bent on fighting to preserve an entity that virtually died two centuries ago and fighting to keep Indo-Trinidadian children tied to the stalk of the sugar cane plant in this globalised world.

Indians in India are aiming now to transact annually US$10 billion through the information technology business, and we sit here talking crap about sugar for export when we cannot compete with anyone on the world market.

It was never in the interest of British colonialism to break up the sugar plantations of the Caribbean as organised because this would have created the basis for economic diversification and the transformation of Caribbean civilisation. And mind you, that is what we are all about.

It is a pity that someone who once served as Minister for Caricom Affairs, and prided himself on this, apparently never understood anything.