Putting on her hat as long-standing music promoter, member of parliament for Central St Catherine, Olivia “Babsy” Grange, begged the Carreras Group last Wednesday to put into music, sponsorship money it could no longer give to sport. But her plea seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Grange, passionate and earnest as she stated the case for music sponsorship, could gain no traction from two Carreras representatives who had just indicated to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Human Resources and Social Development that the cigarette producer expected it would soon have to end all sponsorship of sporting activities, including its prestigious Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year awards.

Head of corporate and regulatory affairs at Carreras, Patrick Smith, and head of tobacco operations, Michael Bernard, were mostly non-committal, offering Grange little hope.

Employing her trademark charm, the MP tried in vain to extract a commitment from the Carreras Group, that since the 2004 award ceremony last Wednesday might be the last, they should consider using the money to sponsor an annual music awards event honouring Jamaican music.

She suggested that since it offered the same “strong community involvement”, as well as an opportunity for public education and since there were no local awards for reggae music, Carreras should look at a local award for performances at the international level.

But appearing not to be taking on Grange, Smith said: “What we have done, though, is to re-balance what we call corporate sponsorship.”

He gave a list of beneficiaries, including the Forestry Department’s re-afforestation project where the company is involved in 10 hectares in Wallenford; the JAMAL Foundation computer centre and the Bustamante Hospital for Children, a long-standing recipient of Carreras largesse.

Bernard, seeming also to duck Grange’s suggestion, said: “We would have loved to continue sponsoring sport, because we are able to do so and we have been doing so for quite a while. But the public is saying to us really that a responsible tobacco company should not be doing these kinds of things and we aim to be viewed as a responsible tobacco company.” Smith added: “I have hundreds of requests for sponsorship. What you try to do is stick with something that you can stick with for a long time, but by the same token, one of the problems is that not many other companies exist here that can afford to take on $6-7 million worth of sports sponsorship, so as long as we are given the opportunity to continue we will continue.”

Carreras, with over $15 billion in stockholders equity, is among the top three most profitable companies listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange.