Rose Hall Sugar Estate will reopen in a month’s time. But the recent brouhaha over bringing back workers who’d been transferred to Albion and Blairmont estates reminds us that, to most sugar workers, the “estate” is still a “plantation”!! Calling it an “estate” – as if to invoke the manicured grounds of some feudal lord – didn’t really change the way workers are treated!! Demanding that they receive “severance” if they were being “severed” was simply following the logic of the situation. Excepting that workers aren’t supposed to be “logical”, but merely “servile”!! Rather than pay the severance, management decided to leave the workers right where they were! “Take that!!”
The question that’s now raised, of course, is whether Rose Hall would be able to attract the requisite number of cane cutters to supply the factory with cane. Your Eyewitness doubts this. And while the Government has signalled it’s gonna recruit foreign workers to fill our labour shortages, it’s doubtful whether cane cutters will be brought in. When the small Caribbean islands needed cane cutters during their sugar death throes, only Guyanese responded!! As your Eyewitness signalled above, a plantation regimen ain’t for anyone but the desperate.
Well, everyone’s saying that we gotta change the way things are done in the industry, so that we can save it. One of the suggestions was to use the latest technological saviour – Artificial Intelligence (AI). So, your tech-savvy Eyewitness (he knows how to press the “start button!!) immediately sought the intervention of the AI module on his trusty computer – to suggest a way forward.
And this is the answer he received: “According to an article in the Guyana Chronicle, the sugar industry in Guyana needs a strong dose of innovation, technology, and futuristic thinking to improve productivity, The article suggests that the industry should approach the cane fields, punts, trenches, and workers manning the fields, factories and floors from the standpoint of a futuristic outlook. In other words, the industry needs to focus on outsourcing its field production, enhance and improve sustainability and advanced technology to increase production, and develop biofuel and electricity in an integrated manner.”
The “article” was actually an editorial from Dec 2020. So, there you have it, folks – the Government actually had the AI-approved solution ever since it got into office!! Now, thanks to your Eyewitness, with the help of AI, they’ve been reminded!! Did you get that suggestion of “outsourcing its field production”?? That means going outside of its present workforce to harvest and transport the cane from the fields to the factories.
Since it was actually the AI bot on his computer that actually came up with the solution, your Eyewitness won’t send in a bill to GuySuCo’s management.
All for the cause!!
…BRICS
In its preparation for creating a “new world order” – if the hype’s to be believed! – The BRICS grouping was petitioned by dozens of developing countries to join the present membership: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The logic, your Eyewitness figures, is there’s strength in numbers?? BRICS already represents 43% of the world’s population, 16% of the world’s trade, and a larger share of the world’s GDP than the G7.
The grouping just agreed to make Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE full members from January 1, 2024!! This will boost BRICS’ population to 46% of the world; and while economically the numbers won’t increase that much, the heft due to oil-producing Saudi Arabia, UAE and Russia will be critical in countering the West. But since decisions in BRICS have to be made with consensus, the additional members will add to the difficulty of achieving this – in light of their diverse specific interests.
India and Brazil, for instance, still have court links with the US.
…oil shipments to Europe
Guyana’s picking up the slack occasioned by Europe’s sanctions on Russian oil imports. Just-released figures show that more than half of our oil in total – Exxon’s 85.5% and our 14.5% went there.
