WESTERN BUREAU – Workers and management at the Monymusk Sugar factory in Clarendon have agreed to try again today to settle the one-week-old strike at the state-run factory.

Allan Rickards, the chairman of the All Island Jamaica Cane Farmers Association (AIJCFA) , is insisting that the impasse must be settled by this afternoon.

“What we decided was that there must be a resumption of operations by Monday afternoon, or very drastic actions will be taken,” Rickards told the Observer, after a meeting with cane farmers and contractors in Clarendon, Saturday.

However, he declined to say what action would be taken if work did not resume within that period.

“We are not disclosing the action which the meeting decided on, at the moment,” he said, but added that during yesterday’s meeting a decision had also been taken to establish a committee that will lobby for a probe into how the Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ) has handled this season’s crop.

“This group will meet to put together the strategy necessary to get the appropriate investigation into why the Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ) was unable to start the crop on time, and why there were delays in repairs to the factory and why their fields are in a bad state,” said the AIJCFA chairman.

Efforts to get a comment from SCJ chief executive officer Livingstone Morrison were unsuccessful.

The SCJ, which manages the island’s five state-run factories, ordered the closure of Monymusk last week after field and factory workers’ industrial action brought operations to a standstill.

The workers walked off the job to press for the dismissal of the estate’s operations and field managers.

After the closure of the factory on Wednesday, the Sugar

Producers’ Federation called a meeting with the SCJ and the unions representing the workers. But on Friday, those talks ended in deadlock after the SCJ refused to remove the operations and field managers from their posts.

“We agreed on everything except to, at least, give the operations and field managers ‘low profile’ jobs at the estate,” said a union source, who attended Friday’s meeting.

On Saturday, organiser for the University and Allied Workers Union (UAWU) Humphrey Boreland said residents in the Lionel Town community in Clarendon were planning to “rebel” if the factory does not resume operations by tomorrow.

“Ninety per cent of the business community in the area depends on the sugar workers’ wages and so if the factory does not start up by Tuesday, the people are going to take to the streets,” he warned.

The strike at Monymusk is the latest in a series of protests which have been affecting the struggling sugar industry. Just over two weeks ago cane cutters at the Bernard Lodge Estate in the neighbouring parish of St Catherine protested over poor working conditions.

The 2004/2005 sugar crop at the Monymusk estate began on February 24, nearly six weeks after its usual start-up date.

Last crop, the factory produced roughly 29,000 tonnes of sugar and has set itself a target of 30,000 tonnes for the current crop.

– cummingsm@jamaicaobserver.com