Moses Nagamootoo and Clive Thomas betrayed sugar workers

Dec 07, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
The sugar industry continues to be one of the most important industries in Guyana. It supports more than 15,000 jobs and $22 billion in taxable compensation to workers. The sugar industry also attracts direct investment valued at close to $3 billion directly and more than $5 billion indirectly. This is approximately 4 percent of all direct investment in Guyana, more investments than what the “permanently travelling to conferences” CEO of GO-Invest has developed in all his work life.
So what we see Clive Thomas is doing today by clandestinely making decisions that continue to accelerate the breaking up of Guysuco is nothing but anti-national and anti-patriotic. His action continues to spread misery in the industry and will continue to deny Guyana economic activity. Clive Thomas, an academic with little real world and business experiences, by his very utterance and actions in the sugar belt has comprise the rural economy of Guyana and will bring great economic hardship to those who seek a livelihood from the sugar belt. Is this a way of getting back at the sugar workers for rejecting him and choosing Dr. Jagan in the PCD talks in the 1990’s?
But strangely enough, there are tons of academic literature from the 1970’s proving that it is this same Thomas who wrote widely on the relevance of the sugar industry, its usefulness to Guyana, how much the sugar industry contributed to the Guyanese economy by way of the sugar levy and how it has paid its dues and subsidizing other industries. So why this fip-flop from Thomas? Why this determined attempt to destroy the sugar industry by Thomas? Is he suffering from a serious state of amnesia?
But this stubborn attempt to defund the industry and bring greater poverty to the rural folks of Berbice and Demerara will back fire on Thomas and his new political masters in the PNC. This group is now dogmatically supported by their chief apologist who has now added his voice to the oppressive dialogue. Prime Minister Moses Nagamotoo told the media that “Bailing out Sugar is like raiding the Treasury”. Is that so?
But this same Nagamootoo was the one who wrote extensively in the Mirror newspapers in the 1980’s on how the PNC was attempting to actively destroy the sugar industry with the sugar levy. Today this same Moses has “turncoat” on the workers and joins with the PNC elitist in their aloft agenda of destroying the livelihood of sugar workers. This makes him nothing but a wolf in sheep’s clothing who is prepared to destroy the welfare of the people at the bottom. That makes him anti-Guyanese.
Jai (Harry) Lall

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