Press Release submitted by the Barbados Sustainable Energy Cooperative Society Ltd
Colleagues
The Board and Management of ABC Ltd and BESCO Ltd are happy to announce that the 2024 sugar harvest is scheduled to commence next week.
The factory itself will be ready for operation on Monday 18 March, and the first delivery of cane is set for Wednesday 20 March. This year’s crop will be a historic one, in that key roles in the industry are now under the control of a Co-operative body (CoopEnergy Barbados) whose membership is open to all and sundry. Additionally, for the first time ever, workers in the sugar industry will own a 20% stake in the operations of the two key companies.
Trevor Browne Lt Col (Ret’d) SCM
Chairman
ABC / BESCO
114 responses to “2024 Sugar Crop”
@Bush Tea
The Agenda must be supported. Media Houses depend on advertising revenue.
@Bush Tea
Make a more over the next two weeks for example of stories making front page headlines in both traditional news publications. Then plot to events topical, just gone or to come. It will give you a sense of what we are dealing with.
I find the comments ridiculous. It is day one, with new players. Anywhere, you have to expect hiccups.
My greater concern is the lack of transparency in exactly what was transferred or sold or leased.
When the GoB wished to outsource the management of the Caves, they managed to produce financials, as unattractive as they were.
Process and transparency are important. If the BWA ends up in the hands of a consortium, including a white shadow or two, with a similar lack of hard facts, i can guarantee no pass will be accorded. As it shouldn’t, irrespective of who buys/leases/assumes control of, formerly publicly owned assets.
@NO
The position is that the takeover company is private and NDA considerations apply if the blogmaster is understanding it correctly. We need to separate what public assets was involved in the transaction which is different from the business plan of the private companies involved.
@NO
Further, we need to hear more what “mismanagement practices” were discovered in the due diligence exercise that preceded the transfer of ownership.
David
One needs to separate items.
For example, if the new private owners were able to cancel/invalidate/renegotiate the former sugar sale contract, that is private. Whatever the new terms and conditions with the severed workers, that is private.
The BAMC was a PUBLIC entity.
If ABC is leasing publicly owned lands, the terms maybe deemed private, but not the fact they are being leased. What was transferred w.r.t. Portvale? This is for the BAMC to report, not the new private owner.
We must be careful with NDAs when they include public assets.
The PUBLIC trumps any NDA, or every deal would enjoy protection via an NDA.
Hit post too early
The poor management practices, would come from Annual BAMC reports?
Not that they will admit to them.
Who signed the lopsided contract with UK buyers of Bajan sugar ‘for a song’s?
There is no good reason to disagree with your last comments NO.
The PM has been frequently reminding us of the ‘shite’ she inherited.
A few years ago, I first heard about this transfer of assets to the ECCB (?) or similar w.r.t. current or former Clico lands to settle accounts.
Was this covered under an NDA?
Recall the issuance of J-Bonds was a staggering number.
BT Dec 14-21
“Questions were raised about the Debt Settlement Arrears Bill on Monday after Leader of Government Business in the Upper House, Senator Jerome Walcott said the Bill covers $1.9 billion in arrears, including $250 million being unpaid National Insurance contributions for public workers between 2015 and 2018, and $312 million in compensation for land acquired by Government”
I could never reconcile the $1.9B number. Subsequently (Aug ’23) we heard from the PM the NIS redirection of public employee contributions was actually north of $400M (vs $250M). We were aware of other public indebtedness but that total was +/-200M. Yet 400 + 312 + 200 is still $1B shy of the total 1.9B quoted?
Recently we were told, the GoB paid the ECCB in Bonds to reclaim ownership. Were these Series J Bonds? That destination of J Bond payment was never mentioned.
@NO, it was generally known government had been negotiating with EC states re CLICO.
https://barbadostoday.bb/2023/09/21/govt-moves-to-get-back-lands-used-as-collateral-to-settle-clico-claims
Cutting cane by hand in Australia.
Where would you say workers had the higher productivity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bLA8LjqJow
There are cutting championships organized in Australia. Here is one from 2021.
No point us even competing.
Louisiana today.
NorthernObserver
March 26, 2024 at 11:38 am
1 Vote
Who signed the lopsided contract with UK buyers of Bajan sugar ‘for a song’s?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Which foreign entity will buy the likul 10K tonnes of sugar produced as the UK did when we produced 200K tonnes at preferential rates way above world sugar prices?
Your question should be who fcuked up the land?
@David
The timing makes it worse? (Negotiating vs negotiated) What account(s) were settled with that extra billion in J Bonds? And didn’t the PM say, they paid the ECCB with Bonds? What Bonds?
@NO
We spitting in the wind. The government knows it holds a strong hand because of a weak political opposition AND. A disengaged public and a compliant traditional media.
I guess spitting is better than pissing in the wind, easier to dodge the blowback 😀
In the same BT article you linked to y’day, MP Straughn is back to the $250M number for the NIS redirections, this dated AFTER the PMs address in Aug’23 (the same one she said Savvy vendors can stay regardless) where she used a number north of $400M.
Hence, getting a handle on accurate numbers is tough. I’m sure there is an explanation, possibly her number included SOEs, for they had also been mentioned elsewhere to be in the redirection group.
The Parliamentary document on JBonds didn’t give an amount in total, merely what they were to be used for.
@NO
Trust is important in any situation. During the budget debate Minister of Tourism Ian Gooding-Edghill stated the Savvy on the Bay matter is tied up in court therefore he was unable to share greater information in the well. As far as the blogmaster is aware Savvy matter is not a court matter. Not yet anyway.
And it would appear, much to @enuff frustration, the Blogmaster knows something about the Savvy affair lol
Wasn’t the same Minister once Chair of both the TB and NIS? And when introduced at a BLP annual conference, the audience was instructed he wouldn’t be taking questions on the NIS?
One wants to trust, yet trust is earned. And several of those who desire to be trusted keep providing reasons to doubt.
The reason why Australian manual sugar workers were so vastly more productive than Bajans in the 1920’s is because after WWI there was a manpower shortage in Australia, many casualties suffered by the ANZACS.
In Barbados we had a vast surplus of labour so whereas Australian manual cane cutters did all the field work, women and children found a place in the field.
It is only during and after WWII that Barbados sugar output really started to grow, sugar prices rose and the island was able the depression years of the 20’s and 30’s behind it.
“According to the First World War page on the Australian War Memorial website from a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which over 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.”
WWI means alot to Australia … many casualties in the Dardanelles.
I had never realised Australia lost so many men in WWI.
Just under half the number of Australians died in WWII.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66666364
Slavery in Barbados.
The total number of slaves in the ENTIRE British Empire who were emancipated was 800,000, 10% in Barbados.
The guy is out to lunch on his numbers!!!!
This is for people who are ignorant and want to remain so.
Jamaica had four times as many slaves as Barbados at emancipation. Still, together, Jamaica and Barbados accounted for about 50% of the slaves emancipated in the British Empire.
David Harewood is a joke!!
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070579/jamaica-slave-population-1734-1833/
Trinidad had less than 20,000 slaves and Guyana about as many as Barbados.
The simple fact is that the British Empire did not depend on slaves in the Caribbean for its success.
It was a maritime empire and depended almost entirely on trade and its control.
The islands in the British West Indies are too tiny to significantly impact world sugar output.
Brazil, for a short period St. Domingue, Cuba with French capital would have been the major employers of slaves.
David Harewood needs to go to Haiti and then he can speak about the degradations of Africans, first by the French and then by themselves.
A tidbit or two worth considering.
“Between 1838 and 1917, over 500 ship voyages, with 238,909 indentured Indian immigrants, came to Guyana. Some 75,898 of them or their children were recorded as returning to the subcontinent.”
Guyana was largely “developed” by indentured and not slave labour.
“The Caribbean colonies that received the largest number of workers from India were British Guiana (240,000) and Trinidad (144,000), leading Barbadian novelist George Lamming to write, “There can be no history of Trinidad and Guyana that is not also a history of the humanization of those landscapes by Indian labor” (1994).”
The slave population in St. Domingue was over half of the entire slave population in all British Dominions.
“By 1789, there were over 465,000 slaves in the colony (roughly 90% of the entire population).”
Haiti is the country most dependent on slavery for its development and look where it is now!!
Slavery makes no economic sense.
…. but trade does!!
John Knocks
As you are on a roll a cheese roll 🧀..
Your next assignment is to calculate / guesstimate the sum total number of slaves that lived and died during the 400 years of European infamy
(1) between the original slave stock who were carried away to the Caribbean and other places in Americas on pirates ginal ships.
(2) and were bred (raped) for 20 subsequent generations
(3) were the final number who were emancipated in the last generation
White folks are beginning to admit their totally evil wicked and unholy ways ☠️
This is what happens when you do not know the facts!!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RTXGu1RR4Zc
Your logic is missing
was the point that went over your head
slaves brought in + slaves freed
is the beginning and the end
and not the larger middle portion of the wickedness
of your self-identifying slave masters ancestors heroes
as you are slaver apologist
the white devils don’t want to know the facts as they are going straight to hell
“The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.”
By 1680, the slave population in Barbados was 40K.
It had doubled by 1817 to about 80K and at that time the number of Barbadian born slaves accounted for 94%.
The number of slaves who came to Barbados can’t be more than 50K, probably alot less.
Conditions and treatment clearly favoured their multiplication.
Now if Mr. Harewood went to Brazil he would find that millions of slaves went there.
…. but then Brazil is “millions” of times the size of Barbados!!
This is not rocket science.
“By 1680, the slave population in Barbados was 40K.
It had doubled by 1817 to about 80K”
Slavetown Data
1817 – 1680 = 137 years
mothering slaves were raped from age of 15
135 / 15 years = 9.1333 generations
1st generation of slaves = 40K
9th generation = 80K
what was population of 2nd-8th generations
Correction*
mothering slaves were raped from age of 14*
137 / 14 years = 9.7857 generations
and had up to 15 children
excess were sold across Americas
Barbados is a dot and was a slave port
it would have reached it’s full capacity quickly within a couple of generations
The Quakers were among the most prominent slave traders during the early days of the country; paradoxically, they were also among the first denominations to protest slavery. The denomination’s internal battle to do so, however, took over a century.
Dub,
Nobody is bothering with John Knox and his nonsense. I see only what my eyes catch in scrolling past.
“Nobody is bothering with John Knox and his nonsense. I see only what my eyes catch in scrolling past.”
D
The Cult of the Parrot
John is a white boy parrot so his narratives are always biased and ignorant
His arguments typify the collective racist white race
He deliberately refuses to learn or see the Truth
Thought for the day
in the old days news was limited to a handful of sources
now there are a plethora of sources
the biases have become extreme with right wing news
and western/northern propaganda which is still racist
555dubstreet
March 29, 2024 at 5:37 am
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Barbados is a dot and was a slave port
it would have reached it’s full capacity quickly within a couple of generations
The Quakers were among the most prominent slave traders during the early days of the country; paradoxically, they were also among the first denominations to protest slavery. The denomination’s internal battle to do so, however, took over a century.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So, we agree that an institution that had been existence for millennia was ended in less than 200 years.
That’s the point to focus on and to try to explain.
Why and how did it just happen?
The Quakers were among the first Evangelical Christians to appear coming out of the Restoration, 1519-1648!!!
Quakers, like Jews were blessed with success in economic activity.
All they did was to acknowledge the supremacy of God, have a little faith and be guided by the “Inner Light” that exists in all mankind, put there by God.
Evangelical Christianity begun in the Reformation spread in the 1700’s and became more acceptable in the Church of England.
That’s why it was England that ended slavery first.
There was no such upsurge and spread within the Catholic Church.
There were two Great Awakenings in the 1700’s which spread Christianity throughout the Atlantic World and saw the appearance of Methodism.
Moravians also became a moving force.
But it took a few generations for it to happen and begun in the 1720’s.
Just as God chose the descendants the Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be a light to all nations, so to did he provide and fill a small group of individuals of the Quaker faith to spread His Word among all mankind.
555dubstreet
March 29, 2024 at 3:57 am
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Correction*
mothering slaves were raped from age of 14*
137 / 14 years = 9.7857 generations
and had up to 15 children
excess were sold across Americas
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Go look at the Slave Returns of 1817 from each slave owner in Barbados and you will not see a preponderance of children.
Get your facts straight.
There was a steady growth of the population as you would expect in any population with no birth control in which the males still had their genitals unlike the millions of African males taken to the Arab world across the Sahara.
The number of coloured slaves in those returns was 5-7% showing that there was mixing but not a preponderance.
Harewood should go to the Arab world and pull this stunt or just be lost in wonder love and praise at the glory of God exhibited clearly for those with eyes to see.
He needs to have the scales over his eyes removed, like many on here.
The only population that did not grow was the “white” and free coloured population and that was because freedom allowed travel and relocation so they were in a constant state of flux, as you would expect.
Free people have the ability to move to where the action is and the Atlantic World beckoned.
Barbados provided few opportunities as it always has.
Miscegenation became more and more prevalent in Barbados after slavery to the point where few Barbadians do not have a slave owning ancestor.
Most Bajans are clearly mixed, it is evident from their skin colour.
By the mid 1850’s, the population had surpassed 100,000 and the island faced high unemployment or low wages.
Cholera took out 20,000 Bajans in 1854 and at the end of the century another 20,000 went to Panama, Brazil, Argentina the US etc in search of employment. Still, the population grew naturally after these setbacks.
When you are a slave your owner feeds, houses and clothes you and provides you with medical attention.
There is no reason to seek a change in the physical status quo and that’s why slavery existed for millennia until Quakers and other Evangelical Christians, freed from spiritual bondage by God’s Word, applied that Word to ending physical bondage.
To appreciate the physical benefits of slavery to the individual slave, do a quick calculation on how much of your income goes to housing, food, clothing and medical attention.
That’s why socialism, communism and fascism are so attractive and the reason so many in so called free societies are willing to give up their freedom to totalitarian rulers.
That’s why an unconstitutional Parliament has been allowed to exist in Barbados for so long an why corruption exists.
So long as the powers that be spread around a few crumbs, Bajans will remain enslaved.
Western Slave Markets
Barbados Slaves (men, women, children and excess babies) were sold to the other slave colonies outside Barbados throughout 17th to 18th centuries, it was the British-American Seaport.
Britain industrialised breeding of slaves like animals and started plantation slavery in many other Caribbean Islands and (from 1619 Jonestown) in America up to independence.
Studying Little Island Barbados’ slave records with your limited mind is not the full story.
Remember who you are
the present always contains the past
and the past shapes who we are and who we will be
The history of African-American social dance
Why do we dance? African-American social dances started as a way for enslaved Africans to keep cultural traditions alive and retain a sense of inner freedom. They remain an affirmation of identity and independence. In this electric demonstration, packed with live performances, choreographer, educator and TED Fellow Camille A. Brown explores what happens when communities let loose and express themselves by dancing together.
@ John March 28, 2024 at 3:35 pm
(Quote):
The simple fact is that the British Empire did not depend on slaves in the Caribbean for its success.
It was a maritime empire and depended almost entirely on trade and its control.
The islands in the British West Indies are too tiny to significantly impact world sugar output.
(Unquote).
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You are back at your god-based justification for chattel slavery in the Caribbean- especially in Barbados- by regurgitating the trite argument that sugar was not a profitable enterprise for Britain.
So tell us, Dear Sir John, why did the Christianized British dirty their religious souls by engaging in the slave-trading business just like the Jews and Muslims?
Why did the British government pay in excess of £ 20 million (equivalent to billions in today’s money) to the so-called owners of those enslaved black souls?
Why didn’t the sugar barons just close down the “unprofitable” sugar business and walk away with their blood-stained ill-gotten gains from the British taxpayers?
That payout is the only leg the modern-day Reparations Seekers have to stand on since their African ancestors are just as morally complicit as their European partners in one of the most heinous crimes ever committed against humanity.