Farmers’ Union presses for answers on Nestlé exit

The pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Farm­ers’ Union, Shi­raz Khan, is call­ing for ur­gent face-to-face dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment and Nestlé over the com­pa­ny’s planned ex­it from the lo­cal milk col­lec­tion in­dus­try, say­ing dairy farm­ers are still be­ing kept in the dark about the rea­sons be­hind the move.

Khan’s com­ments come days af­ter the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) re­vealed that Nestlé’s sale process has en­tered its next phase, with an in­ter­na­tion­al firm in Switzer­land over­see­ing the trans­ac­tion. The union al­so said the process is ex­pect­ed to take be­tween six and nine months while the com­pa­ny’s as­sets are as­sessed be­fore prospec­tive buy­ers are in­vit­ed.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Khan crit­i­cised last week’s pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the is­sue, de­scrib­ing it as po­lit­i­cal “spin­ning” rather than a gen­uine ef­fort to ad­dress the con­cerns of dairy farm­ers.