Latest update April 28th, 2026 12:30 AM
The Skeldon project was a dicey proposition from the start
DEAR EDITOR,
I refer to your editorial in your today’s issue 2nd March 2012 and I must compliment you on your very insightful observations which very few except a handful of us old sugar industry managers know.
In 1999 when Bharrat Jagdeo asked my father Mr. Joseph Vieira, who was a director of Bookers and then GuySuCo since he was 34 years old, what he thought of the Skeldon project, his first reaction was where the water to do the project will come from? Since at Skeldon there is no conservancy serving the cultivation, the water is pumped from the Canje at Sandaka into the estate’s navigation system, very much as you described in your editorial.
Since Joe Vieira was a Director of Bookers and then GuySuCo as Mechanical Coordinator for over 40 years, he also knew that there was not sufficient labour at Skeldon for such a massive expansion and that mechanisation of the extension would have to be extensive. But he thought that the water situation alone would militate against the expansion.
The entire project was a dicey proposition from the very start, especially since it was done at a time when every country in the ACP was contracting their industries due to the removal of the preferential price from the European Union. It never occurred to any of us that the situation would be compounded with Jagdeo buying the most inefficient and ridiculous factory on the planet to add to the multitudinous other problems associated with it.
In addition to the water situation, most of the problems at Skeldon are associated with labour availability problems; an expansion such as is contemplated by Ansa McAl in that area would aggravate this already sore issue.
In any event the Canje basin described as a swamp, is also not an area in which I would put such an operation, since to initiate an expansion of this magnitude one would hardly look to put it in a swamp with the inevitable drainage problems that will arise, especially if it is to be heavily mechanised in our rainy climate.
But there are numerous other places where such a project can be placed, since it will require many tradesmen, tractors, combines and factory employees etc., the reason being no matter how extensively you mechanise you will have to have skilled trades people to operate and maintain/repair the machinery.
Guyanese/Guyana can only benefit from such a situation.
Anthony Vieira
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