The masses know Govt. doesn’t care one squat about their social cost

May 15, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Reference is made to Hydar Ally’s letter, “Sugar is much more than a commodity with a market value” (Kaieteur News May 14, 2011). Reading his arguments one remembers George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where creating and sustaining the revolution were heavily reliant on lies, and leading propagandists repeatedly bleating the falsehoods.
Those who dispassionately examined their conditions under the previously named Manor Farm knew that while they were not in the Farm House their conditions were better and the leaders not that self consuming. The bottom line of the satirical story was the creation of a revolution by leaders who misled the animals to believe that should they be in charge things will be better, only to see later that once they got the levers of power they were the tyrannical ones and it became only about them, living off the expense of the farm labour. The managers got fat, living lives of comfort not even the previous owners enjoyed and abused the farm labour, eventually revealing their true selves with the flaunted maxim that “All are equal but some are more equal than some.” This has been the story of the PPP leaders, their supporters, and the wider society.
Many once lean pigs, like Napoleon, Squealer and Snowball in the text, today prance around the farm, hardly able to see the suffering of the poor, the flesh around their eyes contorting their vision, the result of their obesity from their gluttonous and drunken lifestyles and amassed wealth off the labour of the farm hands.
One wonders how the suffering hands are refusing to see it, or have they too like poor loyal and hardworking horse, Boxer, in Animal Farm, even as he recognises what is happening refuses to believe it because “If Napoleon says it, it must be right?” For their own survival, I hope not, and that they would honestly recognise that they were and are being used and told a multiple of lies to sustain the gluttonous lifestyles of the modern day Napoleons, Squealers and Snowballs.
Like in the story, the workers were taught to hate the previous leaders and to believe they did nothing good for them as a prerequisite to sustaining the ‘revolution’ and keeping the pigs contended. Were they to apply the thought processes of Benjamin, the donkey, they would realise that the previous leaders were more humane to them than their own.
Mr. Ally dishonestly claims sugar has done better under the PPP than under the PNC. The truth is, in spite of the many political instigated strikes, sabotage of the factories and equipment, and the burning of young sugar canes, sugar did better under the PNC-led administration and the workers were also better treated. Under the PNC, GAWU secured recognition in as much as GAWU existed under successive PPP administration, 1953-1964. The union leadership was bloated with leading comrades in the PPP leadership.
It was under the PNC the union’s field officers got duty free concessions for motor bikes. Workers started negotiating wages which was not below the minimum wage. Workers also received tax free overtime, which was a struggled fought for and won by bauxite workers and extended to them.
An article written by Rawle Lucas, SN’s Business Page, April 29, 2011, titled ‘The Bitter Taste of Sugar’, graphically shows the production level of sugar under the PNC and PPP, with same being higher under the PNC. It reports “when [the PPP] took control of the sugar industry in 1992, production was trending upwards and in the right direction under the PNCR administration.” And on the year 1990 the PPP propagandists love to refer to ‘prove’ the PNC destroyed sugar, Lucas, states that “while production did hit a low point in 1990, it had increased by 91 percent by 1992. Output in that year reached in excess of 246,000 tonnes.” In making his summation the analyst points to the fact that “It is probably a nightmare for Mr. Ramotar to explain to Guyanese why he and the PPP/C should be left with the reins of power when an important industry like sugar has been so badly managed with the result that output is lower today than it was in 1992. It might have been passable if the decline in sugar output below the 1992 level was a one-time event.
Distressingly for Guyanese, this comparatively poor showing occurred five times, including in the first full year of the PPP/C administration. As in many other cases, whatever experience the PPP/C acquired over the years has not helped the sugar industry.  Output of sugar was one percent lower in 2005 than in 1992. Output was eight percent lower in 2008 than it was in 1992.  Output was five percent lower in 2009 than it was in 1992. Output was 11 percent lower in 2010 than it was in 1992. Collectively, these losses add up to over $6 billion or the equivalent of 117,000 laptop computers at prices cited by the administration.”
For the PPP propagandists to have an iota of credibility, they have to disprove the figures presented above. A feat they will not be able to achieve since facts don’t lie!
Hydar Ally makes a very valid point about social cost in influencing business decisions, but he can only be taken seriously or seen as genuinely concerned about same had he and the PPP not engineered the negative social cost to sugar workers and other workers and communities in this country.
Take for example the PPP government ignoring the social cost to bauxite workers, their communities and the GDP, when they personally sat and instigated its destruction, putting thousands on the breadline, refusing to listen to the workers’ cries, ignored the efforts at a workers buy-out of the company, then turned around and sold the company to foreigners for US$1.00.
Their argument then was not social cost, it was economic cost! Another example is the destruction of the New Amsterdam communities by mandating commuters use the Berbice Bridge.
What of the social cost to those workers and their communities that relied on the transportation industry for a livelihood. The so called working class PPP never thought of their social cost! And what of all the public servants, teachers, nurses and military officers who the government deliberately have living a life of poverty; the many who cannot find work; and those where they closed down state run businesses in their communities and refuse to create alternative employment or retrain the workforce as done in other countries. What of the social cost to these groups, Hydar Ally? You and the PPP tyrants at Freedom House and Office of the President destroyed their social cost, including that of sugar workers! Now you hypocritically cry social cost when the party, for the personal benefit of the leaders, has over the years used sugar workers and GuySuCo as its milking cow.
The masses know the PPP doesn’t care one squat about their social cost!
M. A. Bacchus

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