Dr Harold Davis has been appointed the CEO of GuySuCo. Just who appointed him is unclear, because it is an appointment that must be made by the GuySuCo Board. But it is coming up to a year since GuySuCo has not had an operating Board. The President and his Cabinet had, for some time, promised that the Board would be appointed soon. Of course, there was a time when two different “boards” claimed they each were in charge. At such a crucial time, the non-appointment of the Board is sinister. APNU/AFC intends to end SUGAR in Guyana.
Every day, evidence emerges that APNU/AFC is doing all it can to kill GuySuCo and end sugar in Guyana. This week, the new CEO of GuySuCo claimed that none of the $30 billion that the Special Purpose Unit (SPU) and NICIL took as a loan to support the production capacity of the three remaining sugar estates – Albion, Blairmont and Uitvlugt – has been disbursed to GuySuCo. This is even after the SPU has had $17 billion of the $30 billion in its account for several months now, with interest charges accumulating. Suddenly, two days after Davis exposed the ugly truth, the SPU announced they are releasing $2 billion to GuySuCo for operational expenses. With GuySuCo experiencing major difficulties, why was the money still sitting in the SPU? They are choking GuySuCo to death.
By killing GuySuCo, APNU/AFC is ending SUGAR in Guyana. As Minister of Agriculture, I warned about this in 2014 and throughout the general elections campaign in 2015. When the agriculture spokesperson for the PNC declared — at a news conference hosted by Joe Harmon at APNU headquarters in 2014 — that GuySuCo should be closed and the fields used to rear tilapia; and later, the closing of GuySuCo was recommended by another senior PNC member, APNU’s intention was written in stone. David Granger did deny, in the heat of the campaign in 2015, that APNU/AFC will close any sugar estate, because SUGAR was too big to fail. But that deliberate lie was intended only to fool sugar workers.
In spite of their promise, without any serious analysis, APNU/AFC — almost as soon as they became the Government in May 2015 — closed four sugar estates: Enmore, LBI, Wales and Rose Hall, displacing almost 7,000 sugar workers and their families. To this day, most of those workers have received only a part of their severance payments, a right guaranteed by national and international laws. They called this downsizing “Rightsizing”. They claimed this will make GuySuCo a more competitive and successful public corporation. Today, they are busy trying to give away the closed estates, claiming that these estates have great potential.
When they took the $30 billion loan, they claimed this money would be used to expand and modernise capacity at the three remaining estates. In 2017, each of the three remaining estates failed to reach their 2017 sugar production target, the target for sugar cane yield per acre, at least 20% replanting of new cane plants, yield of sugar from a ton of cane, and conversion of lands for mechanised operation. One of the excuses was that GuySuCo’s financial status prevented GuySuCo from investing in these estates. In part, the problem was that Government’s willingness to return the more than $80 billion that the Government took from GuySuCo in the 1980s came to a screeching halt in 2016.
GuySuCo’s production in 2016 was the lowest since 1991. Its production in 2017 was even worse. Production in 2018 is on pace to be one of the worst for more than 70 years. GuySuCo failed to meet its target for the 2018 first crop by almost 40%. The 2018 second crop is so far disastrous. With problems at Uitvlugt, it is almost guaranteed that GuySuCo would fail to meet its second crop target. With all the problems GuySuCo is facing, with a workforce demoralised by watching more than 7,000 of its colleagues being sent to the unemployment line, and with a wage freeze since 2015, one would have thought that APNU/AFC and the SPU would step in with support for GuySuCo. Instead, they are sitting on the $30 billion.
APNU+AFC is carrying out its real goal – kill GuySuCo and end sugar in Guyana. Throughout this scandal and outrage, Moses Nagamootoo, who has brazenly claimed he is the champion of sugar workers, has been silent. So, too, are the other charlatans, such as Ramjattan and Charandass, whom APNU/AFC have used to fool the sugar workers and the people of Guyana. Sugar workers have been betrayed, and Guyana has been under siege.
