PM on B.S.C.F.A. madness

Dean Barrow

After the successful start of the 2015 crop season, the B.S.C.F.A. was mercifully out of the spotlight. But the reprieve did not last long. This week reports surfaced that a splinter group within that Association has staged something of a coup – registering the Association as a Company, and claiming that it gives them the right to appoint a new Committee of Management. It’s an unexpected and highly unusual development, and today Prime Minister Dean Barrow did not bother to hide his disdain for those involved in what he refers to as madness.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“I don’t know, I can guess, I don’t know which lawyer or so called lawyer advised those that subscribed to this new company. I don’t know how there could ever have been any sense that to find this new company would automatically mean that that company can step into the shoes of the B.S.C.F.A., the real B.S.C.F.A., the association that is recognised by the Act. I was told where the objects in the memorandum of association for this new company state that the B.S.C.F.A. has been abolished by law and that so when this company is formed, the B.S.C.F.A.—having become extinct—this new company can appoint a committee of management for the same B.S.C.F.A. that has been abolished. Now, I don’t know, I say again, which lawyer offered that sort of advice. If you look at the amended legislation, there is a saving clause that makes it absolutely plain that the B.S.C.F.A., which pre-existed the amendments, continues to be a recognised entity under the law, continues to be a legal entity and continues to operate under the egis of its bylaws, except and until the members would vote to change the bylaws. So this argument that the B.S.C.F.A. fell by the wayside—and even if it did—that you can form a company using the name and take over, presumably that is what they want to get at, the assets of the B.S.C.F.A. is absolutely madness. My difficulty has been that the legal advisor to the minister of finance has been ill. Gian Ghandi is actually sick and has not been able to come to work. So I have not been able to pursue, what I will declare from now is my intention, an effort to get the companies registry to delist or de-register this so called new company because of various things that went wrong, including the absence of the limited in the nomenclature of the company. But legality apart, it’s a dastardly move man on the part of those who somehow feel that they can usurp and remove the democratically elected leadership of the B.S.C.F.A., properly speaking, and who feel that they can as well get after the people’s assets.”

Aside from the unusual move to register the association as a company, another hurdle has been that sugar production targets are not being met.