Re-Imagine the Sugar Industry

Mar 17, 2022 Letters

---

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – The PPP/C government’s realistic approach to the sugar industry has created uneasiness among some people, as the administration is moving away from traditional ‘stop gap’ measures (like subsidies) to limit the negative impact of high cost of production by proceeding to “re-imagine” the sugar industry. Enmore sugar estate would be divested and become an industrial hub; Skeldon Sugar Estate will be divested with industrial hemp cultivation and processing, acqua-culture, peasant cane farming, soya and corn cultivation (co-generation is not fiscally viable); Rose Hall Sugar Esate is being rehabilitated for sugar production and should become operational early next year; while the Wales Sugar Estate will be converted into an industrial zone under the direction of the Wales Development Authority (WDA) for which funds have already been allocated in the 2022 budget.
What is central to the re-imaging process is the need to avoid heavy subsidies in the future; ensure that workers do not lose their employment; rehire those who have been dismissed; and promote economic revitalisation of the four sugar estates that were closed by the previous PNCR-led government. When the government says that it would re-open the three sugar estates (Enmore, Skeldon, and Rose Hall), it does not necessarily mean that the estates’ communities would be resuscitated based on sugar, even though that would have been the understanding of many people. I believe that the government conceived the re-opening of the sugar estates as viable economic entities, but not necessarily to be built around sugar cane cultivation, which is of course one option.
The lease of the Sugar Packaging Plant (SPP) facility to Guysons K+B Industries (GKB) for use as a fabrication factory, is one step forward in the implementation of the government’s re-imagine approach. At Enmore, the GKB facility will employ the 30 Packaging Plant employees, and projects a labour force of 500 employees in five years’ time. This project along with others will contribute towards the revitalisation of the sugar estate community, which has been hurled into an economic dead zone by the previous government. The SPP will be relocated at Albion Sugar Estate and put into production there. Agriculture Minister says that SPP workers will be given two months of severance pay.
However rational a plan or strategy may be (and the government has an opportunity to refine the re-imagine process with inputs from the technical team from Guatemala), it is not likely to sit well with some people. Mr. Samuel Gittens wonders why Indian Rights activists who had been critical of the PNCR-led coalition’s closure of sugar estates in 2017 have now gone silent over the Enmore SPP deal. One critic claims, “Ali is now using statistics and figures from another country, Guatemala, to buttress his arguments.” And Mr. M. Narine asks: “Is government moving away from sugar and agriculture?”
The Indian Rights group was critical because the coalition government refused to carry out the recommendations of their own COI which recommended a three-year year turn-around time for the industry. Worst yet, the coalition government did not provide the 7,000 dismissed sugar workers with alternative jobs and failed also to conduct a socio-economic impact study. The Indian Rights activists are aware that the PPP/C government has been providing relief to workers in the form of alternative jobs; the grant of $(G) 250,000 for workers still unemployed (to compensate them for the non-payment of annual productivity bonus and pay rise); as part of the process to build hope for the revitalization of the sugar estate communities. Indian Rights activists know that sugar estates have been losing money at an annual average of $(G) 8 billion during the period 2011-2020. They support the constructive measures set in motion by the PPP/C government to minimise and even to eliminate losses.
While Guyanese must continue to question the viability of projects and policies, their points of view could only gain answering reaction if these are well articulated and grounded in evidence or facts. The decision by the PPP/C government, for example, to lease the sugar packaging plant at Enmore to FKB Industries Inc. is based on several critical factors, namely, (i) the run-down state of the sugar factory, including its cannibalisation and its non-operational state for over six years; (ii) the abandonment of sugar cane fields for a similar period; (iii) the broken bridges and poor condition of dams; (iv) heavy annual losses averaging ($(G) 2.632 billion) over the period 2011-2016); (vi) and low levels of productivity (4-5 metric tonnes per hectare compared with levels of 10.7 metric tonnes per hectare in Guatemala).
These are powerful negative forces that should not be allowed to continue. The government has therefore decided that divestment which protects jobs and increases employment level, will also lead to the revitalisation of the Enmore sugar estate community. The same situation applies to Skeldon sugar estate.

Dr. Tara Singh

---

---