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TRINIDAD & TOBAGO : LA CANNE PREND DU FER

SERIOUS MEASURES NEED FOR SUGAR BELT CRISIS, SAYS LEADER DEEROOP TEEMAL
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO :  LA CANNE PREND DU FER

{ {{D’après Teemal Deoroop et Ram Jagessar, la mise à mal et la disparition annoncée de l’industrie sucro-cannière à Trinidad & Tobago créent une très grave crise sociale, crise qui toucherait en particulier les indo-trinidadiens de la campagne.}} }

Serious {seva} (social work) will be needed to offset
the developing social crisis caused by the ending of
the sugar industry, says Deoroop Teemal, president of
the Swayamsevak Sangh, a long established
charity group that is currently working in the old
sugar areas.

He confirmed that the population affected could be
over 50,000 when the cane farming group is counted.
Already there are complaints from taxi drivers,
groceries and clothing shops in South and Central
sugar areas that business is down. Young people who
want to get married cannot afford housing, and
population density has increased in some areas, with
as much as 13 to 14 people in one house. The ex sugar
workers are not in line for government built housing
which is being distributed.

Teemal said that denser population and an expected
increase in poverty social problems are bound to
develop.. Families are struggling to feed themselves
with a reduced income and some of them really need
help with basic foodstuffs.

"What people need is some kind of long term
sustainable employment which is just not available.
Rural economic development is one possible option but
the systems are not in place. Even if the Caroni
workers get the promised two acres of land, that is
not considered an economic plot to sustain a typical
family. Then there would be a need for capital,
purchase of seeds and equipment, and a considerable
time lag before any results can be seen," he added.

The HSS currently runs a small program of distributing
food parcels to families in places like Basta Hall and
Barrackpore but it is woefully inadequate even the
current needs of the ex-sugar workers in
distress.

Teemal sees the need for serious mobilization of all
religious, charitable and social groups in the areas
to prevent a catastrophe. He also believes that a
political solution has to be found for the problem,
and a viable economic model set out to rescue an
entire community in danger of being wiped out.

{{TRINIDAD'S SUGAR BELT FACING HUMAN CRISIS OF
ABANDONED SUGAR INDUSTRY POPULATION
By Ram Jagessar}}

A social crisis of major proportions is quietly
brewing in Central and South Trinidad, as 8,500 sugar
workers who were laid off two years ago when Caroni
Ltd. closed down, begin to run out of money. They say
Indian money can stretch a long way, but two years is
touching the limit.

Most of the workers have long used up their severance
pay, and find there are almost no alternative job
opportunities in their areas. They have not received
the promised two acres of land for farming and there's
nothing on the horizon to help them feed their
families. Some of them are beginning to starve, as
they simply cannot afford the horrendously high prices
for food that Trinidad has been seeing recently.
Businesses have begun to suffer as customers run out
of money and hope.

Now these 8,500 sugar workers and their families,
around 30,000 altogether, will be joined by the 3,500
cane farmers, the estimated 4, 000 cane farming
workers and their families, making up another
30,000 people, as the cane farming industry ends in
2007.

Government has announced firmly that there will be no
more sugar industry and cane farmers will have nowhere
to sell their cane next year if they are foolish
enough to plant. The cane farmers and their workers
and families are being thrown on the bread line like
the sugar workers, but they have no severance to
collect and they have no land to get. The payments the
farmers receive receive for the 2007 sugar crop will
be their last. The workers have already received their
last pay packets.

Very early in the new year most of them will be out of
money, and like their sugar worker brothers and
sisters, out of luck. There are no jobs for them
either, and most have neither the capital nor the land
to begin sustenance or market gardening.

The ruling government party has some make work
projects like CEPEP and URP in the sugar areas, but
these mostly go to the Afro supporters of the party.
Indians are being punished for supporting the
opposition United National Congress of former sugar
union leader Basdeo Panday, and they know it. Facing
the prospect of starvation and economic depression,
the sugar industry cast-offs have no options on the
table except suffering.

Amazingly, the issue attracted almost no attention
during the recent election contested between the UNC,
the People's National Movement and the UNC splinter
group Congress of the People, except for accusations
that Panday did little to protect the sugar and
industry when he was prime minister. The government
of the day has openly dumped over 50,000 people into
the economic scrapheap, and walked away unscathed.
Here is as glaring a case of economic racism as can be
seen in the region, which is grossly unfair
considering the billions the government is handing out
to its similarly poor urban based Afro supporters.

There is no indication that the government is planning
anything like a rescue for the sugar industry workers
and farmers, even though it has oil money to burn. The
sugar workers' union and cane farmers' unions also
appear to be helpless and out of ideas. The UNC,
having spent the last year battling the upstart
Congress of the People and fighting a losing election,
has had little time or willingness to look at the
welfare of its hard core sugar industry supporters.

Many overseas based Trinidad Indians are up to this
point blissfully unaware of what is happening to their
relatives and friends back in the sugar belt in
Trinidad. Neither newspapers nor local commentators in
Trinidad have any time for sugar industry dumpees
living in the distant countryside.

Indians have their pride in Trinidad, maybe foolish
pride. They will not come out to the cities and towns
to beg and make a spectacle of themselves. That's not
their way. They will suffer in silence, as
their parents and grandparents did in the bad old
colonial days.

But this is the 21st century. It can't be allowed to
happen that way. Maybe it's up to us the foreign based
Indo-Trinis to raise the alarm and tell the world
about the quiet tragedy unfolding in what was once
sweet Trinidad. We have to start raising money and
sending food barrels for our people, just as the
Guyanese Indians did in their time of misery under the
black dictator Forbes Burnham.

I've already started. But I need help. Lots of help.
There are an estimated 200,000 Indo-Trinidadians and
their families scattered all over the world, most of
us living in pretty decent conditions where
we are safe from prosecution and neglect.

I don't think we are going to stay quiet about what's
happening in Trinidad. So I am giving advance warning.
I want some of your money for our people at home. I
want some of your active sympathy. I want some voices
to make some noise, loud enough to wake up an uncaring
government, a sleeping media, and an Indian community
that doesn't seem to know what's going on right under
its nose.

I know some Indo-Trinis here in Canada have gotten
really weary of hearing about the unending advantage
they see daily handed out to their near and dear left
behind in the land of the hummingbird and cascadura. A
few can't bear to read the newspapers or hear about
what is happening down there. Like our Indo-Guyanese
cousins in their bad days, they feel helpless and gut
sick.

But it's not our way to abandon our people when we
move to a better place. The jahajis and their
descendants never cut their connections with India,
even though decades and thousands of miles separated
them. We can't do any less with our people remaining
in Trinidad. You don't have to believe me. Call up
your connections in Trinidad and ask about the
unfolding sugar belt misery. Then we get ready to
rumble.

{{
Site indien sur le jus de canne [ICI->http://tinyurl.com/2q9b4h]}}

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