The Editor, Sir:

As a sugar worker I am both elated and saddened by the announcement by the minister of agriculture that all S.C.J factories will be sold by June 2007. I am happy that the long nightmare of incompetence, mismanagement bordering on corruption and waste will soon be over.

The owners of Damphur Sugar Mills (DSM), an Indian-based sugar company, is offering technical support for our sugar industry. DSM started in 1933, only five years before our modern sugar industry was born. More than fifty years later they began a period of modernisation. While Frome, our largest sugar factory, grinds 6,000 (TCD) tonnes cane per day, DSM's crushing capacity stands at 30,000TCD. Innovative and appropriate technology has fuelled DSM's growth. Efforts at diversification have ontinued in tandem with the enhancement of sugar cane crushing capacity. Eco-friendly cogeneneration plants using bagasse as the fuel were set up. Today, DSM is an industrial conglomerate, with a combined turnover in excess of US$100,000,000. DSM currently employs 150,000 families, directly and indirectly. Why not us, Minister?

One of the reasons is that in 1994 the Minister of Agriculture, along with his colleagues, deregulated the importation of refined sugar.The deregulation dealt a death blow to the industry. It moved the industry from a positive net margin of US$458,439.11 in 1993 to accumulative net losses of US$2.49 million in 1998, and these people claim to love the poor of which the majority of sugar workers belong. Over the last twelve years the industry has lost more than $300,000,000, to less than thirty individuals and companies importing sugar from mainly Cuba. The heads of the All-Island Cane Farmers Association and the Sugar Industry Authority are aware of this.

The Opposition clearly doesn't have a plan for the industry and we are left at the mercy of the Government which says one thing and does something else, and the minister is now adding insult to injury by attempting to represent a parish heavily dependent on sugar and in which his polices have created deleterious effects. "Indeed, if love so nice, why is it hurting so bad."

I am, etc.,

MARK CLARK

mark_clarke9@yahoo.com

Siloah P.O. St. Elizabeth