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Will local content be monopolised?

Feb 24, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

The announcement on the sideline of the energy conference by President Ali that GuySuCo’s Enmore packing plant, plus 55 acres of cane lands, would be sole to a fabricating company aiming to serve the oil and gas sector should have created a ruckus amongst Guyanese. But it didn’t. They had seen Governments selling out so much state assets without any consultation with the people that such action has become an acceptable norm. It seems that after voting a political party into power, they automatically own the country’s assets and can dispose of any at their pleasure. This particular piece of asset (Enmore packaging plant) was dubbed as the key to turn around the fortunes of GuySuCo by the CEO, based on the lucrative price offered for package sugar. The selling out of this facility questions the sincerity of the PPP in their campaign promise to reopen the industry and bring it back to viability?
This sale makes the Government look like they have publicly broken the cistern (GuySuCo) yet they planned to pour the 8 billion dollars budgeted for GuySuCo this year – all in the name of political expediency.
An article said that GAWU requested a meeting with GuySuCo on the issue. Would they be talking to Sase Singh or Irfaan Ali? The real owners of GuySuCo (the people of Guyana) remain languishing on the sidelines and would not be consulted.
Despite all the letters written in the media about the naysayers and the importance of the reopening and survival of the sugar industry, Seepaul Narine, GAWU’s general secretary did not offer a word of condemnation or regret about GuySuCo losing this vital asset. The article clearly voices GAWU’s concern for the faith of the 30 workers at the plant as if continuity of union dues from them is all that matters.
Couldn’t this plant and 55 acres of land be sold by auction? The fact that it wasn’t and the sale was first announced by the president puts the president in a conflict of interest scenario. The reasoning here is that a politician who promised renegotiation of a lopsided contract on his campaign trail and refuses to renegotiate the contract after being elected president now sells, without publicly tendering, a vital packaging bond of a struggling state own corporation to a local and foreign partnership company in the name of local content. If this is not a conflict of interest, what is? Or perhaps it is what it is – interest for benefits!
The general consensus here is that this fabrication company will get all the contracts from the oil company after being propositioned by the president. So we can look out for a monopoly in local content?

Yours sincerely,
Rudolph Singh

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