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Private Cane Farmers in a Corporate Sugar Industry

Feb 12, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

It is noted that GuySuCo’s Board of Directors has decided to engage private cane farmers ‘to accelerate the rehabilitation of fields’ according to SN of February 05, which goes on the report that ‘contracts have already been awarded to private contractors for the cultivation of 4,000 hectares of lands, in addition to
GuySuCo’s 3,000 hectares.

Who decides on the appropriate varieties to be utilised? Opportunity is taken once again to remind the new decision makers of the long existing legal structure relating to cane farmers, under which those supplying Uitvlugt Estate with cane operate. The estate management also upholds the following:

  1. a) National Cane Farming Committee Act (1965)
  2. b) Cane Farmers Contract (General Conditions) Rules.
  3. c) Cane Farmers Special Funds.

It would be recalled that Vice-President Jagdeo acknowledged this legal relationship when in 2022 he and a team sought to address the absence of employment at Uitvlugt Estate at the time when its factory was non-operational and farmers whose canes were rotting were compensated. The Vice-President was also reported as having arranged to re-establish the inactive National Cane Framing Committee. It was also noted that GuySuCo had a long-appointed Cane Farming Officer.

One must therefore remind those concerned of the need to observe the law. Private cane farmers must be provided with their legal rights and must be seen to have been so provided. Hopefully the Corporation will comply with the Vice-President’s earlier intention to revitalize the National Cane Farming Committee.

In this connection, the projected acreage of 4,000 hectares allotted to different cane farmers and on different locations, would suggest that need for assigning more than one Cane Farming Officer, whose duties would obviously have to be described, and taught by the current (Senior) Cane Farming Officer.

The Corporation is not an island! The current management executives must be cautioned against being too authoritative, and this demoralizing those managers who have long experienced a more compassionate style of communication, that they would normally translate to their subordinates. In this connection, it hoped that the GAWU would rewind the current directorate of the long established ‘Worker Participation Forum’ with which employees at all levels are familiar.

Hopefully, the relationship between the new and indeed all cane farmers will be one of cordiality as provided under the National Cane Farming Committee Act.

The undersigned, then a Human Resources practitioner, was specifically selected by Bookers Sugar Estates to engage with Demerara Co (Diamond + Leonora), Barclays Bank DC+O (now GBTI) and Royal Bank of Canada (now Republic Bank) to establish and manage the Cane Farming Development Corporation that funded pioneering Cane Farmers (mostly cooperatives) in Loans up to $3.7. at that time.

They operated at Skeldon, Albion, Rose Hall and Wales ­­– some 14 Coops, with a total of 1,746 members cultivated 3,574 acres.

Hope the above information would be helpful.

E. B. John

Retired Human Resources Director

GuySuCo

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