Sugar workers should be offered these assets as a matter of preference

Nov 25, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

So, the Guyana Sugar Corporation hopes to earn some $32B on the sale of non- performing assets. But in whose hands will these assets end up?
Particularly when it comes to the sale of sugar lands, would these assets end up in the hands of the poor sugar workers, many of whom are wondering whether they would be able to afford a chicken meal for Christmas Day?
Or will these lands end up in the hands of those who already have their hands full and can afford to eat turkey and duck not just on Christmas Day, but “ every single day” of the year?
The Guyana Sugar Corporation has already sold land and assets. And this column did point to an advertisement from the Ministry of Housing earlier this year offering for sale a plot of land for development by private developers.
This comes at a time when there are thousands of Guyanese who are still hoping to obtain a lot.
This column had said then that instead of inviting private developers to buy public lands for elite housing purposes, the government should make the necessary investments and have these lands available for low income home owners. The sums expended are recoverable since home owners do not obtain these lots for free; they have to pay for them and the poor also are paying for their house lots.
As we come closer to the end of this present term of the PPP administration there are growing concerns that the policies of the government are becoming more and more favourable to rich and that it is the rich who will benefit more from the privatization campaign.
And this is why the Board of Directors of the Guyana Sugar Corporation needs to come up with a policy in respect to the sale of non-performing assets which would see the corporation get value for the sale of its assets without these assets finding their way into the hands of speculators who will use them to make more money while sugar workers who along with their ancestors have toiled those lands for generations still remain in squalor and destitution.
The sugar corporation should insist that when it comes to cane lands, preference must be given to sugar workers and their children at a price they can afford. These lands, it must be recalled, are State lands and in as much as the corporation is seeking to wipe out a deficit, it should not do so at the expense of the working class and working poor on whose backs this industry was built.
The PPP administration is fast becoming a “rich boys” party. If you examine the main beneficiaries of the PPP policies over the past seventeen years, the incontrovertible fact is that despite the advances made in the provision of improved social services and infrastructure, it is the economic class of this country that has reaped the windfall of the policies implemented.
All Guyanese, including the opposition parties, must therefore carefully monitor the sale of land not just by the sugar corporation but also by the other arms of the State to see who benefits from these sales. Those directors on the sugar corporation Board who claim to be working class in their orientation should ensure that these assets do not end up in the wrong hands.
The sale of the assets of the sugar corporation will decapitalise the corporation since land is its most valuable asset.
However the sale of these lands while lucrative will not lead to a sustainable improvement in the performance of the corporation which requires reduced costs and increased production and productivity and not necessarily the wholesale disposal of non- performing assets.
Only where these assets result in a financial drain of the revenue of the corporation should there be a compulsion to rid itself of these burdens.
In recent times, there has been controversy as to the sale of lands and little explanations as to why there has been this sudden haste by the administration to sell buildings and lands which it had been holding for years.
The Guyanese people through their watchdog organizations must continue to guard over this process so as to ensure that the poor people are not excluded when large amounts of what is now being called underperforming assets are being disposed of. The media must follow closely this process to ensure that the poor people of Guyana, especially the working poor are not sidelined from the sale of these non-performing assets.

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