APNU HAS TO COME BETTER

Mar 19, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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APNU’s new found love is the sugar workers. It is now saying that it will not close the sugar industry down but that it is interested in turning around the sugar industry.
During the 2011 elections it said that it would privatize the sugar industry. The government took full advantage of this unqualified statement and spread the propaganda that APNU was threatening to close the industry down. APNU was forced to indicate that privatization did not necessarily mean that sugar would no longer be produced. But it did not state just what it meant by saying that it would privatize the industry. And so the government put its own spin on APNU’s non- elaboration of its plans to privatize the industry.
APNU confounded its difficulties when during the Budget debates of 2014 it threatened to veto a subvention to the Guyana Sugar Corporation. Sugar workers took to peacefully protesting outside of the National Assembly. The opposition parties backpedaled on their threat and the subvention was approved. But the damage was already done. The workers understood who stood by their side and who did not.
APNU is now trying to undo the fallout from that threat. It is doing so in order to win the hearts and votes of workers in the industry. APNU is now saying definitively that it will not close the industry down. It should have said that back in 2011. It should also have never threatened to vote- down the subvention by the government. The sugar workers will not forget this. They will remember that they were forced to take to the picket line in order to avoid being placed on the breadline.
APNU is now saying that it wants a turnaround plan. This plan involves a new Board, ensuring increased attendance by cane harvesters, and a privatized management. These are some of the elements of APNU’s turnaround plan.
Well none of these elements will necessarily turn the sugar industry around. Firstly, the Board is not the problem. The problems with the sugar industry are not at the level of the Boardroom. Chopping and changing Board personnel will not turn the industry around. It is easy to say that if there is change of Board that there will be change of policy. But it is far more difficult for parties to develop those policies that are necessary to turn the industry around.
It is even more problematic to ensure increase attendance by cane cutters. Cane harvesting by manual means is a back- breaking enterprise. Sugar workers are removing themselves from the fields because there are better opportunities out there. The cane cutters can make more money working in the construction sector than they can in the fields. Also, many of them do not want their children to do follow in their footsteps by cutting cane. They discourage them from cutting cane. This has impacted on the problems of labour in the sugar industry.
The solution to Guysuco’s labour woes is not to try to improve workforce attendance. Those familiar with the industry understand that the situation with the workforce will not get better. It will get worse.
It is only APNU that does not seem to realize this. The solution is to move towards mechanized harvesting which is what is being done by the government.
APNU is also way off the radar when it suggests that part of the turnaround of the sugar industry may involve privatizing the management. The management of the sugar industry is not the problem. On the contrary, GUYSUCO has always had some of the best managers in this country. Always!
GUYSUCO is not short of managerial expertise. It has some of the best agronomists at its disposal. It has some of best factory managers and field supervisors that you can find anywhere in the sugar industry. Guysuco has a highly competent management.
Privatizing the management was tried before. It was controversial at best.  There were serious concerns as to the high management fees that were charged and whether the country was getting the returns for those fees.Going towards a management contract was perhaps necessary in those days because of the strategic linkages to the marketing of Guyana’s sugar industry. It was the PNC that did privatize the management of GUYSUCO in the past and one can understand the need for that party to defend this arrangement.
But for APNU to move from a general call in 2011 for the privatization of the industry to a call now for the privatization of the management, is a case of moving around in a circle.
APNU is offering nothing imaginative or encouraging when it comes to the sugar industry. In this regard, the plans by the PPPC while not turning the industry around are far superior to anything that the main opposition is proposing.
APNU’s turnaround plan is at best embarrassing. It is not thinking outside of the box.

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