The sugar industry will cease to exist should these ‘experts’ be given any meaningful role

Sep 01, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The recent ramblings by two opposition parliamentary parties in Guyana, the PNC/R and the AFC over the situation in the sugar industry, particularly the Skeldon Sugar Modernization Plan clearly shows how reactive and opportunistic they are.
The Presidential Candidate for the PNC/R has clearly indicated that if elected he will close our sugar industry. Exactly how he will find employment for over 20,000 persons is beyond anyone’s imagination, much less the thousands of other Guyanese who directly or indirectly depend on the sugar industry for their livelihood.
Such lunacy is unheard of in any other part of the world, where a party such as APNU decides that if it is elected to Government it will close the nation’s largest employer in an economy which is now beginning to build a solid base from which to expand.
APNU or PNC, whichever one you prefer, is now apparently dancing to another tune by calling for a National Inquiry into the operations of GuySuCo and the Skeldon Project.
One has to ask where was the party over the years when the Annual Reports of the Corporation were being laid before the National Assembly for the same kind of inquiry they are calling for.
The only difference is that the very members who are calling for inquiry had such an opportunity every single year since the last elections to vet the operations of the industry.
What both the AFC and APNU are now shouting about is tantamount to sheer skullduggery on their part as they were the ones sitting not only in parliament but in the various sub-committees, and even more so Chairing the Public Accounts Committee, where Government was mandated to provide all the information they needed whenever the Ministry of Agriculture under which GuySuCo falls, had to appear before it.
It was the very same opposition members who thoroughly inspected the Skeldon Factory last year for a first-hand look at its very sophisticated operation, the areas of concern and the timeframe within 2012 by which they were working to address these challenges.
As the Corporation so rightly pointed out recently, even the late PNC/R Chairman Winston Murray publicly lauded these efforts.
For these parties to now turn around and feign ignorance of these realities is indicative of how far they are prepared to go into deceiving the voting populace.
What they are not telling the public is that the Guyana Sugar Corporation is performing multiple rescue acts simultaneously and no one has given them credit for their numerous accomplishments’ while industries around them were crumbling.
The opposition parties will not talk about the significant gains in converting the lands to machine friendly layouts or the fact that within a matter of a few years and despite its financial challenges, the Industry is now better placed in ensuring enough canes are in the ground to be harvested and ratoon yields improve.
They will not admit that the alacrity of resolving the challenges at Skeldon is hampered significantly by the financial position of the Corporation. They will not admit that since 2005 there has been an alarming drop in sugar production as a result of large scale destruction of water logged areas during the great floods.
They will not say that sugar cane is a cycle plant and therefore it has to be planted in cycles and any large scale destruction to planted canes will have a multi-year effect, which the Corporation took about five years to completely address and not to mention the finances involved.
They will not admit that the hard work for most part has been done to make field layout machine friendly and the next hurdle is to secure the finances to purchase the cane harvesters which will dramatically improve production.
They will continue to look only at the unfortunate accident at the Enmore Sugar Packaging Plant rather than acknowledging how important such a project is to the financial success of the industry.
They will continue to talk about how they will bring in foreign experts for everything under the sun in Guyana but when the sugar industry makes a move to have overseas experts have a more hands on approach in certain projects such as the SSMP; it is not to their liking.
The fact is that these very political parties who have become overnight experts in the sugar industry because elections are just around the corner should show the same sense of concern and support when the elections have concluded. Rather than tearing down they should seek to help build through constructive and realistic proposals and not pie in the sky dreams.
The Lord will clearly have to personally spend some extra time and help this nation should any of these ‘experts’ be placed in any meaningful managerial role because under either of the two the sugar industry will cease to exist.
Alex Chanderpaul

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