The Food production Minister gave that assurance Monday after meeting with a delegation of former Caroni workers.
“What I have committed to do, although I don’t want to give any false expectation or hope, is to meet and instruct the new board which was put in place two weeks ago, to investigate the matter at their first meeting,” Bharath told reporters.
The money in question is what the Manning PNM administration paid the former sugar workers when it closed down Caroni (1975) Limited and gave workers a Voluntary Separation of Employment Packages (VSEP) .
In 2003, the ADB and UTC offered the former workers the opportunity to invest in a joint venture called the “Sweetener Loan” and those who invested their money would have received 98 per cent of the investment as a loan from the ADB.
The money was placed in the IRUA fund to yield an interest of 12 percent compounded over a six-year period up to August 2009.
Interest generated from the IRUA was expected to repay the loan as well as provide a lump sum payment to ex-workers at the end of the period with which they could have bought the two acres promised by the government under the VSEP plan.
But now the UTC had reneged on the deal and if offering the workers only the principal amount, citing the global financial crisis for the non-payment of dividends to the worker’s investments. The workers stand to collectively lose about $45 million.
The Minister said he did not know the details of the agreement until workers show him the documentation Monday. He said he plans to find out more from the UTC.
“Many decisions were taken prior to this new Government taking office, which we did not know about. Some of them we have control over, others we don’t have control over,” Bharath said.
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