Latest update October 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 15, 2017 News
By Leonard Gildarie
I wrote on it so many times. The idyllic life of sugar-producing communities. There is something there that makes people get all nostalgic with that faraway look in their eyes when they talk about it.
Our country was built on sugar. Slavery, indentureship and the development of colonies along with the Dutch infrastructure we see today, with our kokers and drainage system, all came with it.
When nothing else was happening in the late 80s, sugar helped Guyana. Today, that way of life is about to morph into something else, to make way for a more profitable sugar industry.
We need to put it into perspective. Europe was the Caribbean’s biggest customer, granting it preferential treatment and access to the market.
Once smiling with King Sugar, the producing countries had to now contend with competitive alternative sweeteners like beet, and people who were becoming more health conscious. Our prices fell.
A decade ago, and even before that, faced with the coming of an open market in Europe, its biggest customer, CARICOM countries opted to exit sugar, with St. Kitts and Trinidad and Tobago throwing in the towel. Jamaica invited private investors to run its industry.
To be fair, Europe did extend a phased cash payout to help suppliers in the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) deal with a mandatory 36 percent price cut that it implemented on our sugar. Our prices fell over US$600 per tonne to now just over US$300.
Get the picture?
The implementation of measures to open the sugar market to other sweeteners like beet, which is being produced right in Europe, came to an end last month, in effect making Europe an open market where anyone can sell sugar. Can we compete? That is the big question.
We reportedly received over 100M Euros from the EU over the last decade, building the Enmore sugar packaging factory for US$12M. The rest of the monies were kept in the budget and used as the Government of the day saw fit.
Guyana, however, buoyed by the close linkages of the then ruling political party, the People’s Progressive Party, and the perceived fallout from making any moves that could affect its support base, balked at any moves that could disrupt the status quo.
In fact, in the latter half of the 2000s, Guyana embarked on its biggest infrastructure project, in terms of cost – the building of a state-of-the-art new factory at Skeldon, East Berbice, with expanded canefields. It was supposed to boost production and therefore increase profits.
It was a gamble that depended on a number of things to work.
At US$200M, the plan went awry, with the factory facing one technical issue after another. It failed to kick-start. GuySuCo was forced to pump its little cash to fix some of the issues, including a cane dumper that was not working.
The end results were that for several years now, the Government has kept pumping billions in cash bailouts into a company which had little answers to its shareholders for its dismal performance.
To compound matters, the behavior of the unions, and I am close friends with many of the officials, were simply unbelievable.
Faced with the anger of workers who simply could not understand why the conditions and pay of GuySuCo was so poor, the labour conditions have deteriorated to a point where it appeared that strikes and protests were the worst in the hemisphere – according to GuySuCo officials on Friday.
We lose millions every time there are industrial actions and sabotage. The workers, I believe, do not fully grasp the situation…they just know they want better conditions.
I am sorry for the sugar workers. They are a decent bunch with families, who had dreams of doing better in life.
We just did not get it right. There is no way we can produce sugar at $0.42 and sell at $0.17 per pound. Really? Who does business this way? Why don’t we just give it away?
As a country we have to do much better.
On Friday last, I sat at a press conference hosted by GuySuCo, which was giving an update on the industry. I could not help but wonder where the unions were in such a major update for Guyanese.
We are about to slash 7,000 workers from a sugar industry workforce, yet we play politics.
GuySuCo is fully to be blamed also, with the unions.
We know that executives were being paid handsomely, millions of dollars every month, with little to show. There were little inclinations to fire any one of them for poor performance.
Coupled with political interference and yet poorer agriculture, we had to contend with a procurement system in GuySuCo where prices were inflated and some contractors were making a killing.
Guyana knows about the rackets. We hear stories of sugar being under-reported and cane and cane juice being dumped – GuySuCo denied the latter on Friday.
So, yes, the waste and poor management coupled with even worse decisions at the political level have placed our workers as footballs meant to be kicked around.
The unions, which collected tens of millions of dollars in dues annually, stayed largely quiet and appeared to be mouthing off when they should have played a more integral role.
I recalled the previous administration, and even this one, asking the unions to take a seat at the Board of Directors level to ensure their voices are heard. Zilch! The offers were not taken.
That is why we would have a situation like Friday, where GuySuCo would be sitting at a table alone, speaking about the future of the industry. It is simply not acceptable for both GuySuCo and the unions.
So we are at a crossroads, where only 60 percent of GuySuCo’s field and factory workers are turning out. Do we have 17,000 persons on the payroll or is that a figure that we pluck out of the air?
The reality is that we can’t do without the huge chunk of foreign exchange that sugar brings.
The administration is moving in the right direction and is keeping sugar alive, albeit in a leaner-and-meaner corporation. It literally is too big to fail.
In sugar-dependent communities, the fallout would be too great. There are shops in factory areas. There are those traditional Friday markets that everyone looks forward to and a host of other services, including GuySuCo’s health centres (dispensaries) that will be affected.
No amount of studies and training for sewing classes and mechanic and computer training can ready sugar-dependent communities for the change that is coming.
I know Enmore. I feel for the people who will now have to suffer from the sudden demise of a factory because our people failed in taking the tough decisions.
Now Skeldon is being divested. I agree. It is not working.
On another note, the situation of doing nothing when it matters would be brightened by a situation that is happening in Berbice.
With technology ruling the way we live, some enterprising Berbicians, led by Gobin Harbhajan, the Prime Minister’s representative in Region Six, have launched a Whatsapp chat group called “Issues & Ideas in Berbice”.
What I see there is what is our country needs…discussion. The group includes politicians of both sides of the divide and members who are not necessarily supporters of the Coalition Government. Yet the group has managed to stay alive for several months now, discussing key issues and even bashing each other. They talk about their communities and the problems affecting them. They criticise the police. There is anger sometimes, good-natured ribbing at others, and even Harbhajan is taking his lashes. That is what we need.
October 1st turn off your lights to bring about a change!
Oct 19, 2024
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