Dear Jagdeo, where is the Euro166.67M given by European Union to GUYSUCO?

Aug 19, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

We, the cane cutters of Adelphi village, East Canje will not be fooled by the PPP hacks who are coming to the sugar workers in East Canje to tell us that the PNC destroyed GUYSUCO and they the PPP are somehow our saviours and that we must vote for them in 2025.

The late Cheddi Jagan in contempt, referred to us the sugar workers as a “captured people” (captured by the PPP). Sorry, we are not captured nor are we stupid as Jagdeo asserts us to be. Recently, one PPP bigwig from the Region 6 RDC made a nasty and condescending comment that even if we, the canecutters and in general, the sugar workers at Rose Hall Estate have to eat plain rice and salt, we will still slavishly vote for them. Not so anymore.

The PPP and GAWU destroyed GUYSUCO. Instigated by GAWU, thousands of acres of young sugar canes were destroyed by fires from 1964 to 5 October 1992 every time a strike was called.  As a matter of fact, it was the PPP which announced the closure of Rose Hall Estate in September 1997, in less than 5 years when we voted them into office on 5th October 1992 (and voted for our own destruction) and again announced closure in 2013 after they closed the LBI factory. From January 1998, Rose Hall and Albion became East Berbice Estates with the closure of the accounts office at the Rose Hall. Mr. Tony Viera has written on all the PPP corruption that crippled GUYSUCO from 1992- 2015 so we will not revisit.

Based on our research, as part of the Accompanying Measures for Sugar Protocol (AMSP), the European Union (EU) doled out Euro166.67M (GY$40,554 B), in several tranches to the Jagdeo government, as adjustment to the 2006 reform of the EU’s sugar regime, which saw the implementation of a phased 36 per cent price-cut for countries that sold sugar to the EU. In Guyana, however, the money was never directly handed over to GUYSUCO and was instead paid into the National Treasury. Hence, there is no trail tracking what amount was plugged into GUYSUCO over the years came from the AMSP project, or how exactly the money was utilised or what impact the money had in GUYSUCO. It was not clear if any of those funds were used to prepare GUYSUCO for the inevitable end of preferential prices, and there are many unanswered questions about Jagdeo’s decision to plug GY$47B into the failed Skeldon Sugar Modernisation Project.

In 2006, the Jagdeo government submitted a Guyana National Plan of Action (GNPA) listing three pillars of intervention under the AMSP. The first pillar focused on the promotion, development and diversification of the industry and had a budget of $14.884B; $6.678B of which was earmarked for the growth and development of specific non-traditional agriculture; while another $5.525B was to have gone towards infrastructural and human resources development.

However, a 2016 follow-up assessment has concluded that these goals were poorly met. “There was little progress towards the goals contained in the National Adaption Strategy and AMSP surrounding industry competitiveness and output,” a “Study on Current and Forecast Market Development for ACP Sugar Suppliers to the EU Market” is quoted as saying. The study, which was submitted in July 2016, has concluded that the problem was that not all the AMSP money went to GUYSUCO. “Investment [fell] far below the planned level across the entire period… due to disbursal occurring via budget support… Not all AMSP funding reached GuySuCo.”

AGAIN, WHERE DID THIS MONEY GO?

Jagdeo and the People’s Progressive Party must be investigated for what actually became of the Euro166.67M (GY$40,554 B) that was given to Guyana between 2006 and 2015 and was expected to go to programmes that improved the human resources, field and factory performance at Rose Hall estates and other estates.

The PPP was given GY$40,554 billion by the European Union (EU) to protect sugar workers welfare and strengthen the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. Where did that money go? Inevitably those funds went missing; the money most likely ended up in the pockets of the PPP cabal and never made it to the sugar workers or GUYSUCO. History shows clearly that at no point was protecting sugar workers’ welfare a priority for the dishonest PPP. If the PPP was concerned for the welfare of sugar workers, then the $40,554B would have gone to sugar workers and to GUYSUCO.

We, the cane cutters of Adelphi village call on all GUYSUCO workers and their families to be vigilant and not be fooled by the ‘snake-oil salesmen’ of the dishonest PPP. For 33 years, the PPP failed us, driving the important GUYSUCO into the ground, putting people’s livelihoods at risk and costing tens of thousands directly and indirectly to lose their jobs.  We do not want our children to become cane cutters like us but there has been no job creation in East Berbice under the PPP from 1992-2015 and most recently 2020-2025. What is the point of working like slaves in the cane fields to send our sons and daughters to the University of Guyana, Berbice campus and when they are finished, the only option they have is to leave for the US or Canada. Our children cannot stay in East Berbice because the Jagdeo and the PPP never made any effort to create jobs. As fathers, we want our sons and daughters to have a better life than us but we have to watch in frustration as the PPP friends and families with their PPP membership cards get the few good jobs available in Region 6 by corrupt means.

Our research did not yield any information that Sasenarine Singh, (now an ambassador to Belgium), the last failed GUYSUCO CEO ever held any senior position in any company public or private in Guyana or abroad. He remarked in 2022 that cane cutting “is dignity”. No sir, we do not want such dignity for our sons and daughters, they deserve better. Another failed political appointee as the current GUYSUCO CEO, Paul Chung is no better than Sasenarine Singh. He worked at the Beharry’s chowmein factory as an accountant. But somehow, his experience of working at Beharry’s chowmein factory plus his position as a member of the PPP central committee qualified him to manage GUYSUCO. It is no wonder GUYSUCO continues to decline while our families continue to suffer.

Recently, clueless Paul Chung claimed that GUYSUCO continued production decline under his watch is due to bad weather. This claim is totally false. We work in the cane fields and we will debunk this lie. Under his watch, drainage, irrigation and field infrastructure has suffered. The cane fields were replanted but the drainage and irrigation pumps and the sluices to the sea were not correspondingly improved. Even when land was subsequently abandoned (flood fallowing), the drainage loads continued to be received by the unimproved drainage systems. Compounding the problem, maintenance of the drains, usually done by machine at the same time as fields were replanted, failed to be carried out.

This increased the water table during normal rainfall and also contributed to a reduction in productivity. Other good cultivation practices also were not done with the effect of delaying regrowth of cane and increasing the fibre and trash content, hence reducing the cane quality delivered to Rose Hall factory. The overall effect of all these factors was a deterioration of the sugar content of cane (polarization) from 11.2% in 2017 to 8.7% in 2025 and of the cane/sugar ratio from 10.9 in 2017 to 15.37 in 2025. Of the latter, 80% of the reduction was attributable to the poorer quality of the cane delivered to the Rose Hall factory and only 20% to a fall in factory performance (overall recovery).

Now the Jagdeo and the rest of his cabal sit in their multi-million-dollar ocean front mansions in Pradoville 1 and 2 pretending to care, while sugar workers struggle to survive. We don’t want to hear the usual dogma about the PNC and 28 years, it was the PPP, not the PNC, who forced the closure of Diamond sugar estate in 2010 putting hundreds of cane cutters on the East Bank of Demerara out of work, closed LBI factory in 2013 again placing hundreds of cane cutters on the East Coast of Demerara out of work. It was the PPP, not the PNC, that silenced sugar workers with teargas when they protested during the failed Jagdeo/Ramotar government of 2011-2015. It was the PPP that squandered billions of dollars that should have gone to the sugar workers. Jagdeo should explain to sugar workers what became of the billions of dollars that were supposed to be used to help build the sugar industry.

We look forward to this investigation after the elections.

Regards,

Rose Hall Canje Canecutters  

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• Adelphi village, Cane cutters, Canje, European Union, GAWU, GUYSUCO, Rose Hall

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