PPP mistreated sugar workers and their children over the decades

May 11, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
PPP leaders took it upon themselves to lambaste the Coalition for the declining state of the sugar industry on May Day 2017. Although this will be one of the principal issues responsible for the Coalition’s loss in 2020, the PPP is itself guilty of mucking up the sugar industry by removing the expatriate managers in the 1990s, their gross mismanagement subsequently, and Jagdeo’s own US$200 million investment in the busted Skeldon factory, against sound counsel from industry notables.
This was probably Jagdeo’s biggest failed political/economic gambit in his career, leaving Guyanese with an estimated G$43 billion in national external debt, excluding interest charges. He was also at the helm of much financial skullduggery in his time (misappropriation of NIS money for the Berbice Bridge, etc. SOCU still has to get around to this, I think.) Superseding all of this was/is the PPP’s own master strategy of wasting the futures and lives of the sugar workers by not doing more to secure a better life for them out of the sugar industry.
The fact is the life of a sugar worker is one of indenture. Sugar workers only need to ask themselves, “What am I really fighting for? Can cutting cane allow me to improve the life of my family? Can I buy a house, can I buy a car? Will I be able to send my children to UG?” I stand to be corrected, but I have never heard a sugar worker claim that they were able to buy a home or car or send their children to UG cutting cane.
Knowing that the sugar industry was moving to collapse with the shift in EU policy in the 1990’s, the PPP could have taken the opportunity since then to cut up the sugar industry and give the sugar workers a much better deal than they could now get. But they never did because they felt they (the PPP) would die politically without the support of the sugar workers.
So they selfishly kept thousands of Guyanese in indenture, or modern day slavery, most very probably without the benefit of a sound secondary education, with children who would have very little opportunity for securing a life much better than their parents, except that family members would either pull them out of the country or adopt them financially.
As a matter of fact, both the PPP and PNC, recognizing the abject welfare of sugar workers, are both guilty of not doing enough to give them a better life by moving to close the industry in the first instance. The futures and lives of sugar workers were sacrificed over the decades just so that Guyanese could enjoy the benefits of being able to purchase imported goods on their shelves. Sugar workers were never paid the real value of their wages, and it will remain a fact that they will never receive the true worth of their labour. This was the fundamental principle of the industry’s operation from time immemorial – slavery.
It is my considered opinion that no Guyanese should ever be condemned to the hard life of indenture as a sugar worker. The sugar industry should have long ago been put in a national strategy which included its closure and its loss in foreign revenues being strategically recovered by investing heavily in other export industries.
Guyana would of course have to import sugar. All of this would obviously have been done with consultations with the workers and their representatives along with other stakeholders. To those who question this option, also ask if we are satisfied with where the sugar industry is today, and should Guyanese be condemned to a life of indenture cutting cane.
The bottom line is that both the PNC and PPP shafted the sugar workers and their children over the decades. This is why the DNC, to be brought on stream by a well-known contributor to our national discussions, looks forward to the votes and support of sugar workers in 2020.
Lance Cumberbatch

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