The right-sizing of GuySuCo was a Cabinet decision, not based on Board proposals

Jun 22, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I pen this brief response to Mr. Jamil Changlee’s letter (KN Thursday June 17, 2021) captioned, “Claim that WPA was not responsible for estates closure was ludicrous.” When I read the letter my first impression was it came from the PPP/C letter writing “factory/unit” and should be ignored. I also noted that the letter writer refused to identify me by name for reasons best known to him. But when Freddie Kissoon in his column, “Who has a neck on whom: False narratives can mislead innocent people,” sought shelter under Changlee’s porous umbrella I decided to respond.
My understanding of polemics is you engage what is said or written and you do so within a given context established by the speaker or the writer. Mr. Jamil Changlee’s attempt to paint me a liar violated this basic principle of civilised discourse. Kissoon contended that Clive Thomas closed down GuySuCo which is a fallacy since the corporation was never closed down. I ignore this obviously false statement and instead I briefly focus on Kissoon’s following remark: “5,500 sugar workers were dismissed and 28,000 Indian families were put on the bread line.” Objectively, this can only be a reference to the closure of the two Berbice estates Rose Hall and Skeldon, and Enmore in Demerara. It was this point raised by Kissoon I was addressing – not the closure of the Wales Estate, (in 2016) which Changlee deliberately added to the discourse to make his point. If the polemic was about the closure of Wales estate there would have been no response from me; doing so would be pointless.
Having made this necessary clarification, I stand by the position stated in my June 16, 2021 letter. I will add that the proposals for the right-sizing of GuySuCo operations put to the cabinet by the Thomas-led board were not accepted and what followed was the Cabinet initiative, not the GuySuCo Board’s plan that was holistic and addressed the short and long term interest of the industry, and its workers/families and their communities.
In closing, I must say that I deliberately refuse to engage the other aspects of Mr. Jamil Changlee’s letter since they were not relevant to the polemic, and just an opportunistic attack on the WPA.

Yours truly,
Tacuma Ogunseye

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