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No intelligent businessman would invest in cane at Skeldon

May 30, 2014 Letters

 

Dear Editor,
Please allow me to respond to Mr E. B. John’s letter at page 4 of Kaieteur News Saturday 24th of May, 2014, captioned Private Cane Farmers to the Rescue. Mr. John, I agree with almost all that you have written but I have some useful insights and facts that you may not be aware of:
(a) No intelligent businessman or farmer would do any investment in cane at Skeldon. It makes no economic sense to do so. Because of the performance of the Skeldon factory and the  failures  of Guysuco, the existing Skeldon Cane farmers are in dire financial strain. Some farms have already gone out of existence.
(b) Guysuco has contractual agreements with the farmers. However, it does not honour any arrangements it has with the farmers nor does it follow the National Cane Farming  Act.  Instead, it is sucking the life blood out of the farmers by imposing ridiculous charges on the farmers like 50% mark up machine hours and refusing to pay farmers the money due to them after selling the sugar produced (farmers in other parts of the country have been paid already). As a result the farmers cannot pay their loans and do not have the resources to do proper crop husbandry to safeguard their crops.
(c) The National Cane Farming Committee is spineless, does not represent the best interest of Cane farmers and is being chaired by a political “hack”.
(d) Guysuco provides no meaningful assistance to the Skeldon farmers and cannot “apply its expertise to assist” when it does not listen to the experts in its employ.
(e) Not one cent of the E. U money went to the Skeldon Cane farmers and the figures show that they need it the most. I think that the E. U Ambassador should be aware of this by now.
(f) The Chairman of the board of Directors of Guysuco in his wisdom has one Estate Manager managing the two largest estates in the country (Albion and Skeldon) for the last 6 months. How is this humanly possible? It is common knowledge that every Estate Manager that has been sent to Skeldon has failed. For the last 5 days, that is, 22nd to 26th of May 2014 the TCTS at Skeldon Estate has been 40, 54, 81, 35, 40 respectively. How can the Skeldon farmers survive with this? How can there be a turn around with these outputs?
(g) Government  made several promises to assist the Skeldon Farmers none of which have been kept. One that was critical to the survival of the farmers was made about four  years ago when Government promised to lower  the interest charges the farmers have been paying to the banks. The farmers are still waiting for this to happen. The industry is performing so poorly that it requires a “bailout” every year from the government. Yet there is no bailout for the Skeldon  farmers who are suffering the brunt of it despite there best efforts.                                                                                                                                        So Mr. John, Guysuco’s “Strategic Plan” is to guarantee that the Skeldon Farmers fail and thereby ensuring that the New Skeldon Factory is the greatest failure in the history of our country.  It is a known fact that without the farmers the factory will fail. Given the resources the farmers will continue to better quality and quantity of canes. The Skeldon Cane farmers need to be rescued.
Anand.(Farmer@Skeldon)

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