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Dec 31, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

I saw a most amazing thing in yesterday’s Guyana Chronicle. A letter captioned GUYSUCO responds to Kaieteur News on Skeldon factory was signed by Observer.
Now if this is GUYSUCO responding to Kaieteur News, why would it be signed Observer and why would it appear as a letter in the State-owned daily.  This newspaper got the same astonishing release and carried it as a news item.
As if this state of affairs were not bad enough, the contents of the response leaves one speechless and wondering just what we have come to in terms of those who are entrusted with managing this country and the critical industries.
Can you imagine a response to the effect that the loss of US$3M is irrelevant? Who would write such nonsense? Can you imagine this is what is stated in the response: ‘that because the revenue loss was never planned for it was irrelevant’? Had anyone made such a statement during the era of Forbes Burnham, that person would have been fired on the spot.
I am therefore calling on the Minister of Agriculture to determine just who issued that release and to decide what action would be taken because as I see it anyone making such a statement is them self irrelevant to GuySuCo.
If the Minister of Agriculture fails to take the necessary action, I shall call on the President of Guyana to take the appropriate action against the Minister because I cannot believe that this is the sort of reply that should be forthcoming about the concerns expressed about the future of Guyana’s major industry.
The Guyana Sugar Corporation is the largest industry in Guyana. It is the largest landowner in Guyana. It is the most capitalized company in Guyana. It is the largest foreign exchange earner and the largest employer. Each year it rakes in some US$150M in revenue. It employs some 20,000 workers and another 80,000 persons directly depend on those workers for their survival. This means that directly some 15 per cent of the population depends on this industry for its survival.
GuySuCo’s production for this year is reported to be the lowest since 1990. Is that fact too going to be deemed an irrelevancy simply because such production was not projected or planned for? Many workers in the sugar industry this year spent a dismal Christmas because they either did not get bonus or the bonus was not at the required level because of the production level.
But are the workers to blame? Is it a case of falling labour productivity or is it as has been suggested by others, that in fact when you examine the shortage of labour on the various plantations and the production that each worker is cutting more cane than before. Thus the argument that while labour is short, labour productivity has increased because more cane has to be cut by each worker.
The sugar workers got six per cent this year. We are not told as yet whether, like the public servants, those who earn below $50,000 per month for the back-breaking labour will have a similar $4,000 cost of living adjustment permanently added on to their 2009 salaries or whether the sugar workers will again be shortchanged.
This is the last year for 2008. It has been a most difficult year for the industry, one in which a great number of workers faced humiliation, none the least of which was the hurt of some of them who were unable to buy a decent present for their children this Christmas.
Perhaps the US$3M may not be relevant to certain people. But I can tell you that for the average cane cutter, having even a few thousand dollars more for the holidays would have eased his frustration.
There is likely to be a management shakeup in the industry next year. After having read the response to the Kaieteur News article and considering what has occurred within the industry this year and more so, the debacle of the new factory at Skeldon, I believe the shake-up should begin in the Ministry of Agriculture.

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