Tony Vieira’s career in sugar was/is a failure

Feb 01, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In a letter which appeared in the news media on Jan 27, Anthony Vieira a Director of GuySuCo and a member of its Commission of Inquiry (CoI) expressed the opinion that given the circumstances of high wages and its inability to mechanize harvesting the only way forward for the Corporation to become economically viable and bring wealth to Guyana was through crop diversification.
He gave no detail for this transformation but promised that full disclosure of the proposals will be available by Oct’16 which when implemented will make loss of the Wales factory conglomerate a memory of bad times since the workers will not face displacement but have continued employment working in an industry with a future.
He was therefore seeking the trust of sugar workers and a little more time for his miracle solution to turn around GuySuCo.
Unfortunately, Tony Vieira has been a dreamer for most of his life. By profession he is an agriculturist. He came from a family which owned three sugar estates two of which are on the West Bank of Demerara (WBD) where he was the Manager until he ran their operations into the ground due to lack of investment, strategic planning and poor management.
The sugar factory has since been abandoned and the sugar lands are being sold in bits and pieces to developers. The other estate, Pln. Houston on the East Bank of Demerara (EBD) has suffered a similar fate as the WBD estates. Interestingly, there were no crop diversification on any of these estates after sugar cultivation failed although the then PNC Govt. had subsequently  experimented on the WBD estates with a dairy farm which subsequently failed also.
Tony Vieira in his missive expressed conflicting views on the re-structuring of GuySuCo to make it profitable. He felt that suggestions made in a news media letter of Jan 16 by Khemraj Tulsie, a former GuySuCo employee for needed improvements in many critical areas of the Corporation was off base since in his opinion growing sugar cane in Guyana had become completely uneconomical and in his personal capacity (not as a GuySuCo Director) he did not see how the fortunes of the Corporation could be reversed cultivating sugar cane under existing conditions.
However, he later recanted his views in the closing remarks of his letter and admitted that he had accepted a Directorship for GuySuCo after he perceived that he could make a difference as the opportunity existed for converting the proposed abandonment of sugar cane lands which in his opinion are uniquely and perfectly designed for other things such as crop diversification which could provide continued employment for proposed displaced sugar workers and bring wealth to the country.
The APNU+AFC Government is yet to make public its proposals for the future viability of GuySuCo. Turning around any corporation is difficult; turning around a farm based one is unheard of.
However, it appears that based on the experience and advice of one of its Directors who claimed he was born in the sugar industry, GuySuCo will close down much of its sugar cane losing assets and introduce other crops to form an economic and viable combination which will not only prevent the displacement of workers but be profitable to the country as well.
To bring new crops into profitable production on abandoned cane fields will require substantial capital investment, re-trained workers and a minimum of 5 – 10 years as soils have to be analysed, fields laid out, plant types determined and produce markets negotiated and assured.
These and other requirements necessary for successful crop changes would be unattainable during the life of the present Government and therefore for continuity there has to be consensus among the politicians of both parties that the benefits of crop diversification as envisaged is viable and therefore worthy of capital investment if the money could be found. If not, the proposed scheme should be considered to be just a pipe dream as the eventual displaced workers wait it out to find work in a sluggish economy and/or receive severance pay, if any.
Finally, Guysuco is the largest employer in Guyana and its workers can determine which political party governs the country. Because as a core they have the trump card, politicians of both parties are making all sorts of conflicting populist promises and solutions without merit to return GuySuCo to profitability and ensure its long tern sustainability.
Therefore, President Granger conscious of the fact that cutting jobs can cause social unrest nevertheless will have to bite the bullet and do what is evidently necessary which is to divest the assets, operations and activities of an industry which is financially bankrupt and cannot be returned to its former glory and sooner or later if nothing significant is done will take the country with it.
After all the APNU+AFC Govt. under estimated the complexity of the challenges it inherited from GuySuCo and now appears bewildered in its ability to deliver.
Charles Sohan

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