Weir assures efforts will be made to protect workers as sugar industry is restructured

Sugar workers at all levels are being promised that all efforts will be made to save their jobs as the Government transitions out of the industry.

They will also be given the opportunity to own shares in privately-run sugar estates, Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir said.

He gave those assurances in an interview with Barbados TODAY amid concerns that with the Government preparing to lease state-run plantations and the private sector taking over ownership of the island’s only operating sugar factory, Portvale, jobs will be lost.

“Really and truly, jobs are the first thing you try to preserve. Labour is definitely going to be protected and that is why I encouraged the team at the BAMC [Barbados Agricultural Management Company] to make sure they engage the unions. I am not signing off on anything until we get the unions’ support so they are currently preparing to engage the unions and I will follow up myself,” Weir said.

“A lot of the vacant lands that we have will be going over to the BADMC [Barbados Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation]. That would mean we will still need people to work the land.”

Adding that there would also be ownership opportunities for workers, the Agriculture Minister said: “Those people who are on the sugar estates, they will be transitioned into the new arrangement where the ownership goes into an employee enfranchisement model. So, you are still going to need workers on the farm.

“This is the first time in our history that those farm workers who get minimum wage, go home sometimes with a small pension, come back and have to exist on that, they will be taking shares that they don’t have to buy upfront. So, in addition to their pension, they will get a dividend from those shares.”

“With the renewable component of it [the restructuring], the numbers are showing that it will be profitable. So, we will be repaying them for the blood, sweat and tears they have put into those farms,” he explained.

Last month, during a radio call-in programme, Weir said the sugar industry restructuring model was in the “transitioning” phase, noting that instead of spending $140 million to build a new factory, with the assistance of new parts and private investment, Portvale could “carry what we are requiring it to do”.

(sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb)