Putting these people to diversify GuySuCo is madness

May 19, 2018 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
I have tried to remain silent for three years, but it is becoming a problem and if I don’t release some of my pent up frustration, I am afraid that I will burst.
We have two governments – it is not a Coalition – it appears to me that the Cummingsburg Accord gave far too much power to the AFC to form the Coalition: Ministry of Agriculture including GuySuCo; National Resources including Bauxite, gold, Oil etc; Communications including broadcasting; Ministry of Works, Home Affairs – and the bigger party, APNU kept very little for themselves; really only Ministry of Finance. And from watching them in operation, it seems to me that the AFC is operating quite autonomous in their areas of control. It’s a very strange construct and no one that I have spoken to from the PNC disagrees with me.
Today I want to address a letter in yesterday’s Stabroek News captioned “Corporate governance at GuySuCo has been ripped apart” by one Mr. Sasenarine Singh.
To help make Mr. Singh’s point, I will relay to the public two issues, which showed me that the incompetence in and of GuySuCo is so thick you can cut it with a knife.
After the Coalition came to power, they held one of many very expensive Commissions of Inquiry to look into what had to be done with the sugar industry; everyone knows this. What is less known, is that someone/something…GuySuCo, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Finance…issued a directive that no husbandry work must be done in the industry until the Commission of Inquiry’s findings were made public, and in fact no money was allocated by Government, since GuySuCo was too far in debt to carry out these essential operations.
The inquiry started in June of 2015 and lasted to October, and the COI recommended that the industry should be privatized, but Government decided not to accept that advice and delayed the situation another month.
What I am saying is that it is my information that during the long months – June to October/November 2015 – when the first crop canes were growing in the fields, no husbandry was done, since they were waiting for the results of the COI. The no husbandry included no fertilizer for 5-6 months, which badly affected the 2016 first crop.
Since any recommendations, which the COI could have arrived at, could not possibly be that we should just abandon the sugar industry, not doing husbandry to fast-growing cane was absolutely nonsensical and the disaster went over to the 2017 first crop as well, so in the end this COI was one of the reasons we damaged the first crops in the Guyana industry so badly.
This example of course exposes the shortcomings of Government more than the sugar managers do, but it is my opinion that the highly-paid managers had within their power, the means to alert the government to the dangers of not releasing money to do husbandry in the first crop of 2015. Therefore, the Interim Management Committee failed to get the government, especially the Ministry of Agriculture, to understand the gravity of the situation.
When I was appointed to the Board, the first thing I wanted an answer to was the declining yield of the sugar corporation. Unlike others, I did not go into this position to learn, I know the Guyana industry, and Mr. Robert Corbin asked me to shadow Robert Persaud as Minister of Agriculture when I was in parliament, so I was familiar with the problems of the corporation and I had commented many times on it, but data was not very forthcoming from the PPP, so on entering the board room I asked for the yield of all cane in 2014, by cycle i.e. plants; 1st ratoons; 2nd ratoons; 3rd ratoons; 4th ratoons, and all other ratoons.
Now GuySuCo has a planting programme of 20% of its cultivation each year, so theoretically they should have in the industry at any one-time 20% plant cane; 20% 1st ratoons; 20% 2nd ratoons; 20% 3rd ratoons; and 20% 4th ratoons. Because it was a 20% replant policy theoretically; therefore, there should not be any canes which were more than 4th ratoon but due to bad weather, unavailability of machines etc. they had quite a bit of the cultivation older than 4th ratoons. For those who don’t know, a ratoon is simply the re-growth after harvesting, so ploughing and replanting only happens to any field every five years.
What I found which was not very surprising, was that all the yields were bad in all cycles, since it is unreasonable to expect that a poor yielding plant cane field would grow into an excellent 1st ratoon. In fact, I know a man [my father] who returned his estate to 400% more yield of cane and sugar in 4 years, Mr. Yesu Persaud in a letter to my brother Bruce, called it an inspired performance. The key to this improved performance was growing excellent plant cane, from excellently prepared plant fields.
But the real problem which came as a surprise, was that if one took the low plant field yields and made it 100%, the yield of the 1st ratoon was 15% less, and the 2nd ratoon was 30% less, and incredibly all later ratoons followed this same 30% less yield decline. So the land preparation and replanting was not beneficial after the second year of replanting.
I subsequently asked the Board for permission to see the land preparation practices first hand, and when I did, I began to understand what the reasons were for the horrible GuySuCo yield.
I will not go into any great detail of everything that I found, and there were numerous examples, but I will give one example, I said to a very high official of GuySuCo who was accompanying me on the trip, that it seemed to me that the tractors were not handling the ploughs well. It seemed to me that they needed more power.
I was told that the plough needed 180 HP and the tractor was 180 HP. Knowing that I was seeing a phenomenon where the tractor was not capable of pulling the plough, I consulted my books on the matter and got the specifications of the John Deere tractor and the plough from the internet.
It took me less than one hour to understand the situation, which was that I was dealing with total ignorance!
Yes, the plough needed 180 HP to pull it, but no, a 180 HP tractor cannot pull it. A four-wheeled tractor like the John Deere that I saw in the field uses around 25% of its power to just walk and carry the weight of the machine, it also needs horsepower for the alternator, the hydraulic pump, the water pump to cool the engine etc; in fact, this plough needed 180 draw bar horsepower, which is what should be left when you deduct the horsepower being used to make the machine operate.
The 180 Horsepower tractor GuySuCo was using, which when the above operational deductions are made, was maybe as little as 120-130 HP at the draw bar to pull a plough which needs 180 drawbar horsepower. The institutional level of knowledge of GuySuCo is abysmally low even at the highest levels.
I don’t know, Editor. These people cannot even grow sugarcane, which we have been doing for 300 years; to put these same people to diversify GuySuCo is madness.
Yours Faithfully,
Tony Vieira

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