My pronouncements on the sugar industry are always right

Jun 28, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,

For some time now I have been waiting to see if we are going to take a genuine interest in the GuySuCo problem.There has been quite a bit of interest, but mostly it has just been sniping in the dark and not hitting the target much. When it comes to sugar, I have written on it numerous times since the 70’s, and I have never been wrong. I a long time ago knew that the answer to GuySuCo’s problem was aquaculture. Nearly 30 years ago I gave them the answer for Guyana!

The conversion of the LBI/Enmore lands to be mechanically friendly was a disaster, because it sought a solution which only slightly addressed the existing problem. i.e. they removed a 36 ftcambered ft. bed and replaced it with a 90 ft.cambered bed, which ended up as a bigger problem, since not only did it not work for mechanization, it yielded less cane than before since the planting along the bed was a ridiculous concept.

But GuySuCo still pursues this disastrous path since according to their website “On the newly introduced wide-bed, ridge and furrow layout, chopper harvesters are used for mechanical operations. The Skeldon estate has been the driver in this exercise.” If this was true there would be no need to close LBI/Enmore now, since more than 80% of it has been converted to this wide bed with disastrous results, since we are told that we have to close LBI/Enmore Estate. I predicted it nearly a decade ago.

The slant of these wide beds are not mechanical harvester friendly and Mr. Renger Van Dijk of Genequip told me that at Skeldon a John Deere harvester he checked was using 75% of its power just to walk along the slant at the side of the wide bed. As recently as July 2014 Kaieteur News published the following article which can be seen at this website https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2014/07/19/guysucos-costly-mechanization-plan-will-sink-industry-further/ This article informs the public that in my opinion the widebed conversion is costly and will be ineffective, and will sink the industry further. Nevertheless these people are still publishing this nonsense of innovative wide beds in their website!

Despite the rhetoric of the not so smart executives of GuySuCo, this is the first time we are going to completely close a sugar estate without the canes being allocated to go somewhere else, in other words it is a total closure. In the case of Wales for example we closed the Wales factory but at the same time GuySuCo offered the workers of Wales, alternative work at Uitvlugt and [even though it was not properly verbalized by the GuySuCo PR department] the message was clear, if those Wales workers refused to take up work at Uitvlugt, we will be forced to close Uitvlugt in just a few years.

Rose Hall, we are told is a disaster, but since it is sandwiched between Albion and Blairmount both of which, we are told, are doing OK. One has to ask why, but It is known that deficiencies in Upper Management destroyed Rose Hall, but we know that incompetent management is normal in the industry, GuySuCo itself has in fact said so, officially and unofficially, on numerous occasions that due to migration, shortage of staff, lack of training etc., their staff is not competent to carry out the affairs of the corporation.

If GuySuCo says that their staff are not competent to carry on the established business of a 300-year-old organization, with the historical experience and accumulated knowledge which that brings, how can they tell the public that the same incompetent managers and executives will now be capable of diversifying it efficiently to something/s entirely new?

And this is not a speculation since the management of Skeldon and Rose Hall are presently heading a taskforce appointed by GuySuCo to diversify those two estates!

I am making a direct accusation, I believe that all of this is caused by the CEO of GuySuCo Errol Hanoman, I consider him to be unfit to lead the diversification of GuySuCo and indeed I believe that he is the wrong person to see it through this dangerous period for sugar.

I am saying this since I see the following:

He has no vision for Agriculture.
He makes very questionable decisions; what is right, means nothing compared to what it will cost. He will do the wrong thing if the right thing is too expensive. It is better to do nothing in view of the cash strap nature of the company than to do the wrong thing.
He is an accountant and is not qualified to transition from one agricultural industry to another.
He wants to stay in charge of GuySuCo even though he is not skilled to do what has to be done, and what is much the worse, he does not even know it.
He insists that his staff can diversify GuySuCo, they can’t! But I think that he wants it that way since it maintains him as CEO and if he is not in charge of diversification his importance will diminish in time and so [I hope] will his allegedly vary large salary.
We cannot superimpose the highly paid but incompetent management of GuySuCo in any diversification which can be economically successful. Since it is my opinion that GuySuCo’s fundamental philosophy is; why use one man to do a job, when 5 can do it. We cannot allow that culture to be transferred elsewhere.
So in the end the fact is that GuySuCo cannot diversify GuySuCo!
Hanoman holds too many unnecessary meetings, he is a micro manager but has no hands on experience in factory or field which makes a bad situation worse, his staff sits in meetings in offices more than they supervise on the job this is an old sickness of GuySuCo and prompted Ian Mc Donald to write in the Stabroek’s “Ian on Sunday” that GuySuCo has meetings, to decide when to have meetings, I have seen it firsthand, and it is true.

Tony Vieira