Will PPP implement Bisram/Dev plan to save GuySuCo

Jun 26, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Dr. Vishnu Bisram pens that “WPA & AFC could have saved the sugar estates” (Jun. 25), with a proposal to reduce the then government’s burdensome cost of growing cane. The coalition government, we learn, rebuffed the Dev/Bisram plan in which workers would grow the cane and supply it to the factories to manufacture and sell sugar. I presume the plan still holds inclusive of Indian, Trini, and local investors’ interests. Now that there is a change in administration, would Ravi Dev and Bisram approach the PPP government to implement the proposal or plan? If it was good and actionable under the coalition, then it should be just as good under the PPP administration. It they were so insistent to implement it under the coalition that rejected it, why have they not approached this administration to implement it? This is after all their government and most workers of GuySuCo are PPP supporters.
The PPP committed in its manifesto that it would re-open the four closed sugar estates that affected tens of thousands of families and dozens of villages. Not dissimilar from the coalition’s promise not to close GuySuCo, PPP immediately broke a promise by declaring Wales will not be re-opened. We are now told that Wales will become an energy and industrial complex that will take at least another five years to begin operation. Meanwhile, thousands of workers in Wales, 11 months into this administration, remain jobless. It does not seem to be a priority for the administration. Social anomie, Bisram’s words, and breakdown of families, supporters of PPP, are widespread. What is PPP doing about it? What rewards are PPP supporters in Wales reaping for giving 100 percent support to their party?
The other three estates have not had much cultivation or planning activities for re-opening, and the equipment from the three factories are being sent to other factories, an indication the closed estates would not be re-opened or certainly not a priority for the government. The supporters of the party were fooled. Altogether, only about 300 workers out of 8,000 were re-hired. Several among the 300 re-hired staff have gotten pink slips although the costs of hiring these 300 workers is substantially less than that spent on new management that took over last September. GuySuCo is spending more on management than on the labourers, worse now than under the coalition.
Dev and Bisram are Indian nationalists and rights activists. They have consistently championed Indian rights although they don’t receive support from the Indian community. Eleven months into this regime and they have not been recognised for their work or received any appointment to a position. Yet, they are not speaking out on the failure of the PPP government to re-employ the thousands of Indians who were terminated by the PNC led coalition. Worse, they are silent on corruption. It is hypocritical of Dev and Bisram to chastise the PNC-led coalition for closing the sugar estates and not equally holding the PPP accountable for its inability to resume sugar production at those estates. I am willing to take a bet with Dev and Bisram that the PPP will never embrace their plan. And worse, the PPP will never allocate GuySuCo land to sugar workers to become independent farmers. It is not in the DNA of the PPP to allow poor sugar workers to become landowners. Jagdeo and PPP would have none of it.
Will PPP implement the Bisram/Dev plan to re-employ the tens of thousands terminated by the coalition and that would save the government huge amounts of money?

Yours truly,
Shawn Simmons

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Will PPP implement Bisram/Dev plan to save GuySuCo

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