Dear Editor,
One would not attempt to match the erudition of the letter writer on the subject `Any discussion of specific land distribution pattern must include behavioural factors, occupational choice, vision and discipline’ in SN of April 2, 2019, but it is respectfully offered that there are gaps in the submission regarding the development of Indo-Guyanese workers.
For it is impossible to omit the critical role of the sugar industry played in the economic and social growth of communities, beginning with their transition from the estate logies. It is indeed impossible to overlook the critical role of the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund Committee established by the industry, of which the unions of the early days MPCA and SECA – were also members.
It was through this mechanism that what were called Extra Nuclear Housing Areas (formalised as villages under the Municipal & District Act of 1969), were exclusively constructed to accommodate Indian sugar workers and their families, supplemented by community centres and girls’ clubs.
While the infrastructural works were totally the responsibility of the estates’ management, they later were also actively involved in the building of houses funded through individual loans, repayable in weekly instalments when employees worked, at the average wage of two dollars per week. The two thousand dollars loans at the time could stretch over a repayment period of up to twenty years.
Eventually some 12,000 house lots across estates were sold by Bookers Sugar Estates at exactly one dollar ($1.) per lot.
As it turned out African-Guyanese sugar workers who in 1964 constituted 30% of a population of 28,000 did not benefit from this largesse. This was as a consequence of an administrative decision by the first chairman of the SILWF Committee, J. I. Ramphal — that sugar workers in the villages would have to show proof of legal ownership to be eligible for loans to repair or rebuild their houses – a scarce circumstance in those days. So that after the first set of applicants were disqualified the rest of that community lost any incentive to acquire the benefits for which their colleagues Indo-Guyanese became eligible only by having five years of adult employment (from 18 years old).
Indeed not only could there be found no comparable housing development in villages like Ithaca, Rosignol, Buxton, Hopetown, Plaisance, to name a few, but the latter did not benefit from any similar infrastructural or community welfare development of any kind.
Personal experience can also vouch for the agricultural development programmes introduced on land belonging to Berbice estates. For example there was involvement at Blairmont Estate in establishing cooperative societies at Kabower (cattle) and Bath (rice).
The foregoing are only samples of the economic and social differentiation that were instituted by the sugar industry. There still is not a single community centre to be seen built by the sugar industry in African sugar workers villages.
Yours faithfully,
E. B. John
