The drive to protect the Guysuco Board

Jul 05, 2013 Letters

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“…let us use this moment of celebration to reflect on those things that we did wrong and those things that we know we could have done better”- Raj Singh’s statement at the Honour Roll Function in June 2013 at Blairmont.
Reading that uninspiring statement, all I could have thought about was Wayne Trotman’s quote – “Burying your head in the sand does not make you invisible it only leads to suffocation.”

Dear Editor:
How can a Deputy CEO/now Chairman make such a reckless statement when his lack of leadership remains one of the core reasons for the failure at Guysuco?  His Board did not conduct itself with the due professionalism by effectively carrying out a proper due diligence on the “Turnaround Plan” or the “Jagdeo white elephant” at Skeldon.
From my observation, the entire Agriculture machinery from the then Minister down, was clueless and on remote control – Jagdeo want this; Jagdeo gets this!  Not one man, including President Ramotar, acted responsibly and sought to interrogate those plans carefully.
Anyone who knows sugar will tell you that the Indians, the Australians, the Americans, the English, the South Africans and the Brazilians know about sugar but China certainly does not have the expertise to build any state of the art sugar factory.  So Guyana got shafted in the end, thanks to the incompetence and cowardice of this Guysuco Board.
Guyana now has to live with this Jagdeo “backoo” for a long time; since this Guysuco Board remains clueless on the solutions and only offers one broken promise after another such as:
1.      Failure to establish and implement the regulatory framework to restructure the industry to make it more productive (plenty verbal hogwash from the Board but very few operational and field successes);
2.      Failure to increase production to 300,000 tons by 2003 as promised.  They also promised to increase production to 400,000 tons by 2010.  None of it happened; actually production in 2013 will be approximately 130,000 tons, one of its worst productions comparable to the PNC days;
3.      This Board of Directors promised all and sundry that they will expand cultivation in low cost areas – mainly Berbice, and combine the administrative office and merge factory operations in the high cost areas of Demerara to reduce unit cost.  All of this was supposed to be signed, sealed and delivered by 2010.  Even if we bolt-on two more years as compensation for the 2005 floods, Guysuco still could not meet its promise.  More Jagdeoism – much talk; little progressive action!
For years now, the West Demerara estates are grinding at a loss compared to Berbice but this Board did very little in terms of new policy measures to deal with the real issues.  Kicking the can down the road is its their kind of public policy.
In any business, such gross incompetence would have been rewarded with the summary dismissal of the entire Board.  However, under the PPP, such incompetence is deserving of a promotion.  More Jagdeoism – promote the puppets; charge the people for the incompetence!
I appeal to the majority opposition to fore-warn the Government of Guyana, that until a competent Board is in place, then the Parliament should not be called upon to approve any transfer of funds to Guysuco, especially in the 2014 Budget.  If the PPP wants to operate like a dense bunch then its members must be given the “thick treatment”.
If they want to keep this Raj Singh Board in place, then let them draw the billions from NICIL to fund any future losses.  No one is against supporting the sugar industry but let us use the public funds in the LOTTO FUNDS and at NICIL to carry the burden; not subject the taxpayers to fewer benefits.
Any patriot will support the use of the largesse in NICIL’s bank account to fund the workers in the sugar belt rather than some foreign worker at that Kingston Hotel now being constructed.  It is just anti-national and anti-patriotic to fund people with taxpayers’ money,  people who have no Guyanese residency, pay no Guyanese taxes, and have no social responsibility with this country. If NICIL can fund a Hotel, it can fund Guysuco!
The Minister of Finance stated that Mr. Raj Singh is “eminently qualified, has worked in sugar for a number of years at a senior level, [and] has expertise in areas relevant to the management to a large organisation like the sugar company”.
According to the Guysuco Newsletter from October 2007 – Mr. Singh “joined the Sugar Industry in 1975 as an Industrial Relations Officer and left the industry as a Regional Industrial Relations Manager”.  He never functioned at any senior level in the sugar industry.  He was never part of the factory team or the field team; he was a desk manager who had limited experience on the estates; the core of the industry.  So clearly the Minister is misadvised.
He then migrated to the USA and after some studies, worked at the City University of New York (CUNY), an integrated system of 23 community colleges for some 20-odd years. Mr. Raj Singh works at one of these 23 colleges – Baruch College, in the Human Resources Department ending up finally as a Head of a Division within the Human Resources Department called Human Resources Planning & Technology at which he is still employed as I was reliably advised by a senior CUNY official.
The Minister of Finance clearly was gaffing with the media on Mr. Raj Singh since I did not realize that CUNY is a sugar estate in the Caribbean with 15,000 cane cutters that have major operational problems in the fields and factories.
Sasenarine Singh

 

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