This column takes great pleasure in congratulating the sugar workers of Guyana. Their earning of a day’s pay as bonus last week across Guyana is a blessing. Even as that news made our hearts glow, workers at the Demerara River Bridge were struggling to get the bridge back into operation after an oil barge had collided with the bridge and rendered it inoperable.
The damage was the worst ever experienced by the bridge in its history. In the past, such extensive damage, four spans in length, would have rendered the bridge inoperable for weeks. But the workers were able to defy the odds and get it back into operation by Monday evening at 9.00pm, about 60 hours after it was damaged. It is testimony to what we can achieve when we work together.
Soon after the damage, the President himself, with Minister Juan Edghill, was on site. The President was on site twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday, and early on Monday morning. He inspired the workers, and they delivered the impossible. Both the sugar workers and the Demerara River Bridge engineers and workers deserve Guyana’s highest praise.
Last week the weather was sunny, little to no rain. Sugar workers in Albion, Blairmont and Uitvlugt Sugar Estates met and surpassed their targets, and thereby earned a day’s pay as bonus for the week’s performance. In fact, each time the weather has been good, one or more of the estates have earned bonuses, and the others always come close. It would be unfair to blame the weather for all the woes sugar has faced in Guyana. There are other factors to GuySuCo’s problems, but only those who are bent on sugar failing, those who spend their time desperately hoping each and every week that GuySuCo would fail, would not concede that the weather has been one of the main factors for GuySuCo’s problems over more than a decade now.
Climate change has genuinely challenged GuySuCo, but in spite of global and national issues that have affected sugar in Guyana, when the weather is good, sugar still performs. After more than a decade of weather challenge, we are still trying to figure out how to maintain high production with the new weather pattern.
In 2012, the weather was a major issue for production. In that year, major issues at Skeldon Sugar Estate also created difficulties for GuySuCo. In addition, major changes were taking place at other estates, as a deliberate effort was made to convert field configuration to accommodate mechanised field production. By 2014, some of the changes at Skeldon and at other estates began to bear fruit. In 2014, GuySuCo surpassed its target of 218,000 tons. In 2015, because of a massive first crop, with Skeldon producing its highest ever production, GuySuCo surpassed its target of 242,000 tons. Albion led the way in both 2014 and 2015. However, Skeldon, in 2014 and 2015, began to show its potential.
After the first crop of 2015, the new APNU Government led by David Granger claimed credit for GuySuCo’s performance, although they were not in Government at any time during the first crop of 2015. Moses Nagamootoo, the then self-anointed “champion of the sugar workers”, boasted that they were responsible for the sudden turn-around. There, in fact, was no sudden turnaround. The 2014 production and the 2015 production were the result of the changes made in the industry between 2012 and 2014. The truth is that because APNU then changed management of the industry, there was a real sudden downturn in the fortunes of GuySuCo. The downturn did not begin in 2016; it began immediately in the second crop of 2015. Based on the first crop production in 2015, GuySuCo could have surpassed a production of 270,000 tons in 2015, had it not been for the poor performance in the second crop, when weather was not a factor. GuySuCo is still reeling from the utter mismanagement that has dogged the industry since the second crop of 2015.
Since August 2020, GuySuCo has had to navigate many problems. The weather has been especially brutal throughout 2021 and the first crop of 2022. This in no way means we must go easy on management. Management ought not hide behind the brutal weather. The weather is way beyond our control, and GuySuCo will have to create a production strategy that lives with the changed weather pattern. Management must take responsibility for the failure to yet define a meaningful way to navigate the weather pattern and keep sugar production at a reasonable level.
Yet, I believe that working together, Guyana will find a way to do exactly this. For one, GuySuCo must accelerate its mechanisation programme.
Sugar remains a critical industry in Guyana’s socio-economic landscape. GuySuCo still is one of the largest employers in Guyana, supporting a village economy that provides succor to more than 80,000 people. Guyana cannot afford to add sugar as one of our imports. Guyana cannot afford to give up the foreign currency earnings that sugar brings. Sugar’s drainage and irrigation system contributes significantly to Guyana’s agriculture success, especially in Regions 5 and 6, the country’s agriculture epicentre. Giving up on sugar, therefore, is reckless. As last week showed, the sugar workers are capable of lifting sugar to heights it has reached in the past. Let us give the sugar workers and the industry a chance.
