Excerpts from the Planning Institute of Jamaica-commissioned 'Social Impact Assessment of the Likely Effects of Sugar Reform Options on Industry Workers in Jamaica':

A respondent from Trelawny on the proposed closure of the sugar factories:

"There will be more teenage pregnancies, as parents will not be able to take care of children and many children will try to fend for themselves."

The effect of the closure on the education of sugar workers' dependents was summarised by a St Catherine sugar worker who explained:

"A it (sugar) me live off. A it me pickney dem live off. A it send me pickney dem go a school. So without sugar, no work; so dem cyah go school."

Criminal behaviour

Respondents were clear in stating their belief that criminal behaviour would not be confined to their respective communities but would spread throughout the parishes, eventually becoming a national problem. As one respondent at an Innswood focus group put it:

"Everybody a go take up a gun. Who cyah get a gun a go use a machete; who cyah use a machete a go use stone; who nuh want use stone a go sharpen stick ... to rob."

In another Innswood focus group, a male respondent summed it up when he said:

"My son will rob you, cause he will know that his father worked in vain. The three months I worked in west Virginia (in the farm work programme) better than the eleven years here."

As one elderly sugar worker in an Innswood focus-group meeting elaborated:

"Me work in a sugar to earn a bread. If me stop carrying home flour, then my son a go go on the street go rob and thief and me cannot tell him say that nuh right."

An important employer

Another respondent in the Innswood focus group stated:

"Sugar is an important employer because it will take the people that no one else want. For instance, if you a come from prison, no one else will want to employ you, but if you go to the estate, them not going to ask no question. Dem will just give you a machete and you can go work and two weeks later you get yuh pay."

They also pointed out that it gave them a sense of identity and pride.

The importance of employment in sugar was echoed by all the workers who participated in the focus group meetings.

As one worker from the Salt Pond focus group commented:

"When a person work $400 per day, that can't do nothing. (But) you can survive by that. Inna di week when little money run out, a bare argument; but at least if the sugar industry stay open, you will have a job and money to count on."

Focus-group respondents constantly referred to hunger and poverty as related consequences of the closure of the sugar estates. In fact, most cane-cutters participating in the focus-group meetings admitted that poverty was already an everyday reality for sugar workers; but the situation would worsen if the factories were closed. According to an estimate from a focus group in St Catherine, "three-quarters of sugar workers dead a poor house".

They offered the view that the Spanish Town Infirmary, which houses the destitute and indigent persons in the parish of St Catherine, ended up being the home for "90 per cent of sugar workers (in the parish once they retired from sugar)".

On the poverty line

According to a male sugar worker from one of the focus- group meetings held in Salt Pond:

"Sugar workers are on the poverty line. Can't survive - we have to credit and when we get pay, we pay our debts. But if it (the factory) closes, no one will credit us."

They predicted that the anticipated increases in poverty and hunger would, in turn, trigger criminal activities because as a male respondent in Salt Pond explained: "Di more dem (people) hungry, di more dem get angry. So we a look on more crime."

As mentioned earlier, sugar workers stand to lose not only their wages and salaries if they become unemployed, but their benefits. Focus-group respondents were extremely concerned about the possibility of the loss of benefits, especially those related to health care, literacy and housing. Under current arrangements, workers are provided with subsidised health care by the factory, including dental care. The workers also pointed out the importance of the literacy classes held by the factory for workers. A female respondent in Innswood shared her position on the issue:

"No one a go employ someone who can't read and write. Only sugar will do that. Without sugar, if we can't read and write, nobody a go want we."

Disastrous consequences

Key stakeholders were not as pessimistic in their outlook, however, they did acknowledge that, if not properly managed, the closure of the factories could have disastrous consequences for all aspects of community life. As one industry stakeholder puts it:

"(The closure of the factories will create a) ghost town. You really demoralise people and you are going to throw many of those people out back into the urban ghettos to try to find a livelihood and cause more problems than we have ... (Sugar is) a way of life for people. You can't just treat it like another economic activity because it has a lot of repercussions."