SMUGGLING BLAMED FOR CLOSURE OF HAITIAN SUGAR FIRM A sugar mill which was this nation's second largest employer closed its doors yesterday, saying it had been run out of business by sugar smuggled from Miami and the neighbouring Dominican Republic. The closure of the Haitian American Sugar Company (HASCO) will idle 3,500 employees and affect as many as 30,000 to 40,000 small sugar cane planters in regions around the capital, the company said. "Because of unprecedented and ever-growing smuggling, HASCO regrets ... It cannot continue to accept delivery of sugar cane after April 10," the mill warned planters earlier this week. Since President Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti fourteen months ago, widescale smuggling of basic goods such as cooking oil, flour, rice, sugar and canned milk has lowered consumer prices but bankrupted several local manufacturers, throwing hundreds of thousands of Haitians out of work. At the HASCO compound, where grim-faced workers lined up to receive their last pay, Spokesman Georges D. Rigaud showed a warehouse stocked with an estimated 445,000 unsold 100-pound (45-kg) bags of sugar. "We are closing because of our huge stock of unsold sugar. We have no money left to continue operations," Rigaud said. He said the company owed 7.6 mln dlrs and had borrowed an additional 1.5 mln dlrs in order to pay off workers. Rigaud blamed the mill's problems on an order by Duvalier two years ago forbidding HASCO from refining sugar. He said the government then began importing refined sugar at world market prices and reselling it at a huge profit and the provisional military-civilian government that replaced Duvalier last year continued the policy. "But now with all the smuggling even the state can't compete with smuggled Dominican refined sugar," Rigaud said. HASCO workers earned 4.20 dlrs daily, considerably above the usual minimum wage of three dlrs. It is generally estimated that every employed Haitian supports at least six people. Rigaud said HASCO's closing at a minimum would affect 280,000 to 300,000 people. Laid-off workers were bitter about the closure. "We're dead, and it's the government that's causing us to die," declared Lucien Felix, 34, who has five dependents.