Is GuySuCo another Ministry Of National Development???

Dec 19, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In the 1974 Declaration of Sophia the then Prime Minister and subsequently President of Guyana Mr. LFS Burnham indicated that Guyana was proceeding along the Socialist path and that the Peoples National Congress (PNC), the party which informed the Government was Paramount, hence the term Paramountcy of the Party over Government.
This resulted in the party flag being flown in equal distance from the National Flag over all Government and State institutions.
This was widely abhorred by all and was the cause of ferocious criticisms by many social and political groups including unions and the church as they demanded the separation of the state from the party politics.
These policies also lead to the establishment of the Ministry of National Development and Mobilisation, which was also the office of the General Secretary of the PNC. The criticisms of this policy reached such a level that violent protest and subsequently the destruction of the Ministry by fire in the late 70’s.
What this ministry did was to hire Party officials whose primary roles were to advance the cause of the party, maintaining party offices staffed by party officials and paid through the ministry with government funding.
It also ensured that party groups were constantly in place and operational with the various groups officials also paid through this Ministry.
The opposition at the then time was against this practice and opposed it in every form and on every occasion through protests and votes in the National Assembly.
Eventually after the death of Mr. Burnham and the ascension to the presidency by Mr. Hoyte the ministry was disbanded and the employees were redeployed or terminated.
The reality is that it affected the entire Party machinery and the subsequent demise of the various party groups, which might have led to its loss at the elections in 1992.
However, before 1992 and ever since the PPP union GAWU has been recognised as the bargaining agents for non-clerical workers in the sugar industry the PPP had been able to set up an elaborate union structure in the industry which is second to none in the entire country, the system is masked by officialdom and is a facade.
Each estate has a branch which is led by union representatives who are also officers of the PPP; each branch is supervised by a field secretary who is also a senior officer of the local PPP hierarchy; they are the ones who are paid by the PPP and also by the Union and the ones who give the instructions on a daily basis to the estate branch of the union.
These instructions are mostly based on the political position of the day and what actions to take and how it should be done.
The officers of the estate branch of the union are also the leaders of the local PPP branches in the communities where the estate is and this can include many villages within the estate location, hence the strategic positioning of the various gang representatives of the union within the various villages where they are also representatives of the village branches of the PPP.
If one is familiar with the organisation of the workforce on an estate, one will realise that the estate is made up of the Field Department which consist of the field workshop, the mechanical tillage section, the crop husbandry section, the harvesting section: then the Factory: the Admin which comprise of the Accounting department and Personnel. However, it is in the field and Factory departments that GAWU is much entrenched and active – say for example the Harvesting section can have as many as 10-15 gangs; depending on the size of the estate each gang can have as much as 2 -4 representatives, and it’s the similar situation in every section thus an entire estate can have as many as 100 union representatives in an estate branch depending on the size of the estate.
These gang representatives are scattered throughout the entire communities where the particular estate is located, as gangs are more often named after the villages that the plantations or cultivations are located, and very often they are paid (average days’ pay) by the estate for attending meetings and union activities which have a PPP political slant. So it is easier for the reps who are also PPP branch officers to keep in touch with the villages and the various communities.
So one can now understand the workings of the PPP political machinery in the estate communities and how it is easy for these union/PPP representatives to meet with people at the so-called bottom house meetings, to spread fear and intimidation amongst the ordinary folks and to be the political activists come election time.
It also explains the strategic reasons for ensuring the survival of certain estates as it is critical to their system of control.
In areas where there are no sugar estates a similar situation exists in the Rice Producers Association. The structure is almost identical and the community leadership evolves out of it.
These paid union/political activists man the polling stations etc. and campaign energetically in the communities as both union reps and political leaders.
Neither workers, farmers nor their families would want to go against them for fear of lack of adequate representation should anything occur at the workplace, this way all and sundry are kept in check.
They act as the informants to the party on what goes on in each village they have their ears to the ground on any acts of dissention.
So the Guyana Sugar Corporation is the home of the PPP and that’s why even the General Secretary of the PPP sits on the GuySuCo Board to ensure that everything works according to plan.
All or most of the estate managers now evolved out of this system, if one check they would find that this or that manager was or is the son/daughter/ brother/sister or niece/nephew of some active representative and that is the reason why the level of management and accountability does not exist.
There are no Afro Guyanese Estate General Managers and the number of senior managers from the Afro Guyanese community hardly exists throughout the entire system … why because they did not evolve out of the Union/political system of the PPP.
In the days of the PNC at least one could have named several Indo Guyanese as Admin managers and Personnel managers or field and factory managers. Today that’s not the case it’s all jobs for the boys and only those boys who are graduates from the system.
To make things even more pronounced the GAWU has established its own college and guess what they teach there … not Trade union stuff, it’s all politics and how to further entrench the system, the actions now taken by the unions are all filled with political overtones and of course everyone knows who is the principal of the college.
So in a very different way one is left to ask is GuySuCo another Ministry of National Development and Mobilization – the Office of the General Secretary of the PPP???
Dexter Trotman

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