Sugar crop 2004
Unions in war over weighing scales

By AZARD ALI
http://www.newsday.co.tt/stories.php?article_id=11726

THE Trinidad Islandwide Cane Farmers’ Association (TICFA) has been given the green light to control most of the cane-weighing scales for next year’s sugarcane crop. In fact, TICFA chairman Raffique Shah said his organisation would be managing the cane farming department of the now defunct Caroni (1975) Ltd. That department manages the delivery and sale of farmers’ cane to the factory as well as the subsidised facilities which are made available to farmers for cane production. There are 42 cane weighing scales and according to Shah, TICFA will control more than 80 percent of them. One organisation, the Cane Farmers Association of Trinidad (CFAT) led by attorney Dave Persad, yesterday wrote to Agriculture Minister Jarette Narine objecting to the proposed allotment of scales.

Both TICFA and CFAT executives met with Narine and his Permanent Secretary Trevor Murray on Monday at the Minister’s St Clair, Port-of-Spain offices. The Minister proposed a $10 increase for farmers cane for the 2004 crop. An official in the ministry said yesterday that no decision has been made on how the scales were to be allotted. Persad’s letter to the minister warned that no single organisation should be favoured in the allotment of scales. “They cannot impose on the cane farmers the persons who should operate the scales. This smacks of a conspiracy and we intend to expose it. The majority of cane farmers represented by TICFA, are CFAT supporters,” Persad said. Persad called on the minister to re-establish the Cane Farming Depart-ment as a cooperative scheme to manage the affairs of canefarmers. Caroni was replaced by the newly-formed Sugar Manufacturing Company of Trinidad and Tobago (SMCTT) under a restructured programme in which the former company’s cane farming department was shut down. Canefarmers will provide all the cane for sugar production, the estimated target of which is 60,000 tonnes.