Contrary to their protestations, it is clear that the death knell for the sugar industry has been sounded by the authorities. It would appear that even its diversification into other agricultural products that would take advantage of its excellently drained and irrigated lands is not on the cards, since the sale of abandoned canefields continues unabated.
The venture into rice production at Wales appears to be a pale imitation of the Kayman Sankar venture into that crop at Blairmont some decades ago. The government would be well advised to consult with the head of that entity as to the reasons for the abandonment of that scheme.
But whether or not government would admit to the closure of sugar, the withdrawal pangs are already beginning to bite, especially at Wales and the surrounding communities such as Patentia. We should expect that the symptoms of the historic structural dysfunctions in the sugar industry – high suicide, alcoholism and domestic violence rates, intergenerational poverty, high dropout rates from educational institutions even at the primary levels etc – to increase.
What is to be done? Ironically, there has been a model that was already introduced in the early 1950s to confront those and other challenges and which produced significantly positive results until it was destroyed like so many things by the PNC government from 1964 onwards.
The institution at the centre of the project was the “community centre” (CC). One of these Centres was constructed in each of the sugar “estates” in the midst of the great housing schemes (12,000 homes in total) that were created when the sugar workers were removed from the “logees” starting in 1952.
Each CC had a modern, spacious central building that housed indoor sports such as table tennis, a well-stocked library, kitchen for cooking classes, wood crafting and other crafts, a cafeteria that sold refreshments to visitors and users. Movies and “newsreels” were shown at regular intervals to entertain and inform the community. The CC was appended to a very large playground on which cricket and football could be played.
In many instances there was a scout troop associated with the CC and which met weekly on the grounds. All of these facilities were utilised by the youths in the concurrent baby boom and helped to dissipate and direct their energies away from negative activities.
The CC’s activities were coordinated by a trained and paid “Welfare Officer” who had a house in the CC’s ground along with one for the groundsman for the field. The role of the Welfare Officer was crucial to the development of the community.
In each of the clubs that were organised to run the sports and other activities, the youth were introduced to the running of an organisation with a structure and based on rules. Roberts Rules of Order and the keeping of minutes and following up of decisions made, were eye openers. For most of them this training was to prove invaluable in their introduction to the world beyond the sugar fields and factory.
The libraries had youth and adult sections and debates on topical issues were organised by the staff, which attracted very appreciative audiences from the community who may not have been able to purchase newspapers to glean opinions on these issues.
On Sundays the “pavilion” was packed with spectators to the games being played between teams from other estates. It is a great tragedy that these CC’s have been practically abandoned.
In addition to resuscitating the old programmes under the aegis of a professional “Welfare Officer”, it should not be difficult to add a Counselling Centre to the facility to cater to the psychological trauma from the identified ailments that we predicted above would increase.
The money that the government would now spend to relaunch the CC’s would be infinitesimal compared to dealing with the effect of the pathologies if left unattended.
