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What will be the mandate of the Office of Sugar?

Jun 21, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
Applause for Mr. Rohit Parmanand’s well articulated contribution in KN’s Sunday Special, 18th June, 2011, focusing on the human resource issues facing GuySuCo, but about which its management remains steadfastly in denial.
He was arguably 95% on target; as several of his observations clearly indicated that he has his ears (and eyes) close to the ground. He was certainly 100% on target regarding the under-performance of the specialist human resource management function in the Corporation.
If one reads his message correctly, it has become stultified, with its apathetic functionaries justifying, if only for a moment, the assertion that ‘institutional memory is not a strategic need at this point; the present challenges of the sugar industry have outgrown past practices and therefore require new approaches’.
I hope Mr. Parmanand will forgive the quibble that in the first instance, institutional memory per se does not necessarily exclude current intelligence, or even the ability to analyse, future developments.
There could be no serious debate about the obvious inter-linkage.
In the particular case of the sugar industry however, the agricultural best practices, including the critical drainage and irrigation component, have not changed in a hundred years. Even mechanisation (including mechanical harvesting) is not new to this industry’s operations, introduced as it was at the former Diamond Estate in the 1970s.
Nor is there any argument that apart from Skeldon (and its malfunctioning modern technology) all the other factories are hardly less than forty years old – so that the related challenges are constant and historical.
In any case, having conceded that human resources management (and development) is 80% of the industry’s problem, it must mean that it is in that area that the substantive challenges lie; and therefore need to be addressed by modern professional best practices informed of course by what was recognised by regional sugar counterparts as one of the most sustainable institutional memories in the management of the industry.
Indeed Mr. Parmanand may be alarmed at the fact that amongst its membership are arguably the most informed practitioners in current international human resource management best practices.
Perhaps an area which invites the high quality (authentic) practice is ‘communication’.
Permit me one final nit-pick. What will be the mandate of the Office of Sugar? Importantly, who can be identified as having the sapiential authority that will supersede the collective knowledge of the Board; or indeed replace it, as hinted?
In any case, would not such a move enlarge rather than reduce, the political dimension inherent in the current confused decision-making process?
But then the Unions have been aspiring to such a pinnacle for some time now.
E. B. John

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