BSE Cadets and the rest of the Sugar Industry

Dec 24, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Apart from the fact that there were the Tyrells (Winston and Lance) other Engineers/Chemists in Bookers Sugar Estates included: Joe Alfred, George James, Narvon Persaud, Leonard Khan, Keith Williams; while Agriculturists included Vibert Yong Kong, Donald Drayton; Personnel Managers included Nowrang Persaud, Emamudeen Khan, Abdul Baksh and Anthony Downes; Errol Hanoman and Allan Luck accountants. Alan Luck and I were selected Cadets the same year 1958. But there were those who went off to Bauxite, like Pat Carmichael to Bauxite; while others chose to be Lecturers at UWI.

In the meantime, the Apprentice Training Centre under City & Guilds, London, U.K. was established at Port Mourant in 1957, when almost all the candidates were Oxford & Cambridge O’ Levels (CSEC) graduates.

The first Guyanese Personnel Director was Harold Davis (Snr.) who, along  with Chief Industrial Relations Officer, Latchmie Narine, and Leonard Dyal of the then British Guiana Sugar Producers’ Association, led the Industrial Relations process  bombarded by the following Trade Unions:

– Manpower Citizens Association.

– Guiana Headmen’s Union.

– Guiana + West Indies Sugar Boilers’ Union.

– Guiana Estate Supervisors Association.

– Sick Nurses and Dispensers Association.

As the Personnel Management function expanded, there were annual Conferences held from 1962 at the creative Management Training Centre at Ogle, where the Ogle Diagnostic Centre is also located – of the very comprehensive Health Programme led by a Chief Medical Officer who supervised Estate Medical Officers and para-medical support.

There was from 1964, and still in operation a most comprehensive Contributory Hospitalisation & Maternity Scheme for employees and their families, while a programme of Occupational Health and Safety was established in 1965. A Contributory Pension Scheme had already been formalised for most categories of employees.

In that busy period, the industry’s contribution to the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund helped to finance the construction of Extra Nuclear Housing Areas, with loans repayable generally over a twenty-year period. They have long since become registered communities. By which time both Community Centres and Girls’ Clubs were erected and functioning respectively under the immediate supervision of Male and Female Welfare Officers. The Centres were the breeding grounds for sports, highlighted by Cricket, from which emerged such Test Match greats as Joe Solomon, Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher (Port Mourant) and Roy Frederick from Blairmont, who along with Raikha Tiwari, represented Guiana at Table Tennis.

Quite apart from the above, Professor Clem Seecharan’s massive tome ‘Sweetening Bitter Sugar’ purportedly about Jock Campbell, remarked that the latter may not have played such a definitive role on the British Guiana sugar stage, were it not for co-star Dr. Cheddi Jagan. The light and shadow of conversations between these two protagonists about nationalisation of the sugar industry caused Campbell to temporise with the offer of a commitment to develop what came to be described as ‘Small Cane Farming’ initially financed in 1964 by the Cane Farming Development Corporation consisting of Bookers Sugar Estates, Demerara Company (Leonora and Diamond Estates); Barclays Bank DC+O (now GBTI), Royal Bank of Canada (now Republic Bank) – in the sum of nearly G$4M. The relevant legislation was the comprehensive:

1. a) National Cane Farming Committee Act (1965)
2. b) Cane Farming Contract (General Conditions) Rules.
3. c) Cane Farmers Special Funds Act to be eligible for funding Cane Farmers were required to be legal entities, mostly via being Cooperative Societies. They included:

Skeldon   – Skeldon Cane Farmers

Cooperative Society

– Upper Corentyne Cane Farmers

Marketing Cooperative Society

Albion      – Bloomfield

– Letter Kenny

– Port Mourant United

– Port Mourant Follow-Up

Rose Hall   – Rose Hall Village

Good Samaritan Cooperative

Wales         – Canal No.2

Free & Easy

La Retraite /Stanleytown

Sisters/Good Intent

Belle Vue

There were also individual farmers at Skeldon, Albion/PM, Rose Hall and Diamond Estates. It would appear that a comparable construct is being revived, at best without any Estate Cane Farming Officers, as of old.

For what it is worth the following was sugar production recorded between the first year of viable Cadetship – 1958, and the year of the very extended and inflamed strike of 1964.

Year                                       Tons Produced

1958                                                 306,361

1959                                                 284,425

1960                                                334,441

1961                                                 324,745

1962                                                 326,023

1963                                                 317,132

1964                                                 258,466

I owe my whole career as a Human Resources Management and Development professional to Harold Barrington Davis.

E.B. John

Retired Human Resources Director

GuySuCo

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