The Govt. must not be ungrateful to the sugar industry

May 22, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,

Many may have observed that over the last few weeks, I was placed into a position where I have to call out the Coalition Government, which I supported in 2015, for its less than acceptable performance over the last year.  This is a deliberate strategy to avoid the crass executive behavior that was practiced under past President Ramotar. Never again should it be allowed to happen and the youths have to put steel in their back and ensure that “the good life” must filter down to those at the bottom (the market vendors, the single mothers, the youths in general and so on).  Because of executive actions of people like Donald Ramotar and his right hand Raj Singh, now with 20/20 vision, I would do exactly what I did in 2015 and give my support to the Coalition Government because it was the right thing to do.  Why?  Because of situations like this!
The Sugar Industry Welfare Fund (SILWIF) was established by law, according to Professor Clem Sewcharran in his books “Sweetening Bitter Sugar” to allocate funds for the upliftment of the social welfare of those in the sugar belt. This was an outcome of the Venn Commission, which highlighted the awful conditions in which sugar workers lived for centuries.  Let me be absolutely clear, that money does not come from Government coffers, it does not come from other taxpayers, but is part of the entitlement to the sugar workers for their own labor and contribution for producing sugar.  The more they produce, the more funds are allocated from sugar sales to SILWIF.
The funds are then used to provide water resources to villages on the sugar estates, loans to sugar workers for housing, scholarships to children of the sugar workers and so on. What has happened to SILWIF under the leadership of Raj Singh at Guysuco is nothing but criminal?  Here, we were paying one man, millions of dollars a year to directly “bruk up” the sugar industry, but he could not find the money to pay the dues to the workers between 2010 and May 2015.  Luckily for the sugar workers, Ramotar lost power and Raj Singh was chased out of Guysuco for gross incompetence.
At the end of 2013, the Net Deficit in the SILWIF was G$43 million and I was told at the end of 2015 it was approximately G$140 million.  This situation has occurred because Raj Singh made an executive decision to NOT provide the calculated dues owed to SILWIF. So Donald Ramotar, Leslie Ramsammy and Raj Singh made a calculated decision to not deliver the workers funds to the workers welfare scheme but instead to pay Raj Singh first.  This was the nature of the evil that was allowed to occur under the leadership of Donald Ramotar who claims he is a “sugar man”.
What is the reality today? The new Coalition Government came into power and they found this horrible situation left behind by Team Ramotar but have not to date remedied it.  Again they found income to only pay their senior executive and not one cent for the workers welfare fund. Again we have another “sugar man” in the Cabinet of Guyana from Central Corentyne, but yet this situation has not been remedied.
This means that SILWIF is now running out of funds and at the point where it may be having to make the decision to start letting go people, because this G$140 million deficit has made the agency technically insolvent.  I was told that SILWIF is now actively turning away sugar workers who qualify for a housing loan from their own funds.  I have also been told that SILWIF has suspended all of its infrastructure contracts in the sugar belt such as roads and so on.  This only means one thing – social retrogression for the people on the sugar belt.
No politicians can rest satisfied until this issue is sorted out because like other workers, the sugar workers have paid their dues to this country for centuries! They have all paid their dues in blood and what is happening to the ancestors of the sugar workers is not right and when ignorant people try to condemn how much is being transferred to the sugar industry today, they must take cognizance of the fact that it was sugar that contributed the most resources to this nation over the last 200 years and we must not be “neemak-harems” and oblivious to the contribution from our brothers and sisters in the sugar belt. The right thing to do is to immediately start returning tranches of the workers’ funds to them by making those deposits into SILWIF. By the way, where is GAWU on this matter?
Sase Singh

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The Govt. must not be ungrateful to the sugar industry

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