GuySuCo, a fallen soldier

Jan 15, 2018 Letters

---

Dear Editor, 
The Guysuco Board of Directors, if one can call that outfit a Board in the classic meaning of a Corporation Management entity, ordered the closure of sugar estates, then left the Government of Guyana to explain or spin a tale of hopelessness. The Guysuco Board does not now have a Chief Executive Officer, who is decent enough to leave the sunken ship.
We the owners of the sugar plantations are in doubt as to who is in charge, whether at Guysuco, or Ministry of the Presidency. We know for sure that the person who is named as the Minister of Agriculture is operating on low battery charge.
In a manner likened to Pontius Pilate, the President washed his hands of the matter of retrenchment of 4000 sugar workers, not to leave out the chaps at Wales, had his Prime Minister read out the edict in Parliament.
Poor Moses, he must have felt like the Biblical Moses when he returned with the tablets containing the Commandments. Now we know why Moses threw down the tablets and they shattered. Can there be a replay?
With the half severance pay, sugar workers will invest the money in internet cafe, wash bay, hire car, minibus, traffic in drugs, and enrich the rum shop owners.
What else is there in terms of jobs in a country with high un-employment and under employment? The answer is agriculture, to fashion the green economy this Government proclaims, except green economy means painting buildings green and wearing green clothing.
Editor, do they wear green underwears?
The President said they will be trained as carpenters and other skills – to find employment where – maybe we would witness another wave of illegal migration, to where?
We all know that sugar workers are not employed year round in the industry. With what is saved, their wives carry on the family economy for the remainder of the year.
It is no secret that sugar workers spend large portions of their wages at the rum shops.
There is a precedent in the job-loss scenario. Not quite similar, but can be touted. When the present Government came to office, a bit of rainfall caused the housing area east of the National Cultural Centre to retain water.
A resident of the area promptly moved residence to Main Street, and in like fashion the bearer of bad news to sugar workers followed the Leader. Now that sugar workers are out of jobs they should find alternatives to housing, as many sugar workers live in rented quarters.
There are openings at West Bank Demerara where the President for life of their Union resides; he owns a large tract of land.
And what about Pradoville, and by extension all the other persons in the political party that has over the decades extended sovereignty over sugar workers’ lives.
These former renters of other people’s bottom houses now own mansions, after only twenty years in power. Here is where the sugar workers patrimony lay along with their fore-parents hard work, not to diminish the creation of lands for agriculture by our African ancestors.
As farmers, we of the National Farmers Organisation wish to express the view that love and compassion have not been extended to the dilemma of the now retrenched sugar workers.
All those who busied themselves in the sugar industry, whether as managers, unionists, others, are now withdrawn. The workers are now on their own.
To add fuel to fire, there has not been a national dialogue on sensitive issues. Diversification has now moved to divestment. The machinery of the State is now empowered to advertise the sale of sugar lands, factories, machinery etc.
Speculators with money, most of which is illegal are sharpening their jaws to gobble up sugar. Just like when rice silos were sold to drug interests, causing serious dislocation to the livelihood of another sector of the rural population.
Where has love for people been displayed? Are you aware that there is no representative of rural people in the Cabinet?
Do not look at chaps from the countryside; they were never part of that patrimony. They left rural areas to escape poverty, which itself is the problem, not individuals who are poor, who represent immense human capital.
The cause of poverty is not lack of money capital but under-utilisation of material and especially human resources.
The key to development clearly must be in the expansion of participation in productive activity, an objective that depends primarily on the ability of Government to accelerate the commercialisation of agriculture and, to expand employment through small scale industries in rural areas.
A green economy is an ideal solution for Guyana at this stage of historical and social development. Sugar has fallen. The dimensions are sad. Vultures are hovering overhead.
The same people who presided on sugar’s demise now would make violent demonstration of their negligence, which is a mild way to suggest that they corrupted every aspect of sugar’s diversification from the World Bank’s advice in 1992 to shut down the Demerara estates and concentrate on Berbice. Concentrate on Berbice they did with Skeldon, to misuse of European Union billions for sugar diversification and other sins.
Witness who is leading the sugar workers’ protests in  Berbice. Persons who are mercenaries to certain political party never cut a stick of cane, even to suck its juice.   They are suckers anyway, down the human anatomy.
Our agricultural communities, who are not operating in ideal farming conditions, have been displaying tremendous acumen in providing food for local consumption and export.
We can do better in many areas, especially in post-harvest handling of produce and internal marketing, and other areas of good management in the 21st century.
We have no heritage industrial system, no major pollution, large areas of arable land, now with the closure of sugar plantations significant acreages that are cleared of bush and jungle, well drained and access to irrigation, skilled managerial resource from sugar industry, School of Agriculture, National Research Institute, the outfits at University of Guyana, boundless resources in sun, wind and water.
Lest it be forgotten:  all the persons who became farmers except those Guyanese whose ancestors  had to endure centuries of enslavement and have nothing to show, are persons who were sugar workers, and they became our grand core of food crop farmers, rice, livestock, fruit crops and others. The inference here is that the sugar workers will be a great boon to our agriculture. This matter of providing the former cane lands to former sugar workers has been elaborated in other NFO publications. We now say this the time for decisive action.
What we lack is love, compassion, empathy and a feeling of nationhood.
Are we wrong to feel let down by persons who came to our communities asking us to give them the chance to make changes? Did they mean change their economic outlook?
Truly,
Hafiz Rahman
National Farmers Organisation 

---

---