15 years later, Caroni searches for vehicle owners

AZARD ALI

FIFTEEN years after closing its sugar manufacturing operations and selling off millions worth in vehicles to ex-employees, the defunct Caroni (1975) Ltd has been left with a bitter taste.

The company is seeking to find owners of 600 vehicles including jeeps, trucks, motor graders, cattle trailers and ambulances in order to legally transfer them as this was not done back in 2003, when the vehicles were sold. Adverts in the newspapers, last week invited owners to come forward but only 30 have done so and gone to the company’s offices in Brechin Castle in Couva, with documents seeking information on the transfers.

With Caroni’s closure in 2003 and subsequent sale of vehicles, both the company and its ex-workers have been flouting the Motor Vehicles Road Traffic Act by failing to have the vehicles transferred. A senior licensing officer told Newsday that without the legal transfer, the vehicles are not covered by insurance. These vehicles, he added, could be seized for the lack of proper title.

Caroni’s CEO Kevin Singh told Newsday that the company, albeit 15 years later, is seeking to find the owners and legally transfer vehicles to their names. Singh said the company is working with the licensing division of the Ministry of Works and Transport to effect the 600-plus transfers. The senior licensing officer said that the failure to transfer vehicles sold at lower prices to ex-workers was one of, “what was once sweet in goat mouth, is now sour elsewhere.”

Singh told Newsday, “We will be working with the Licensing Authority to have these vehicles transferred, albeit after so long some may have been sold.” Caroni closed down in July 2003 and offered its 9,000-plus workers a voluntary separation package. Most of the company’s heavy equipment and vehicles used in sugar production were sold to the workers via private auction.

Of the 600, 400 are believed to still be on the roads without proper registration while the rest may have been sold for scrap or left derelict after deteriorating over such a long time.