Govt examining new proposals for diversification at Skeldon Estate – Jagdeo

With the Guyana Government looking to diversify the economy, active consideration is underway to introduce new activities at the Skeldon Estate in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne).

According to Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, Government has already received several proposals for new business ideas for the facility.
“At Skeldon, we’re looking at diversifying. So, we’ve had several proposals,” he said during a recent interview with a social media commentator.
The Skeldon Estate was one of the four estates across the country that were shut down by the then A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Administration, forcing thousands of sugar workers on the breadline.
As such, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government after taking office in August 2020 has been looking, in a more studied way, at ways to diversify these estates with the introduction of new industries in order to create job opportunities for those displaced sugar workers as well as other persons in surrounding communities. The same, Jagdeo said, is being done at Skeldon.
“We’re thinking about: using the Hemp legislation to convert some of the land into hemp [cultivation], aquaculture, and going back into sugar a bit, but in a smaller scale, so we can generate a series of employment opportunities at Skeldon for people who were displaced from the sugar industry,” the Vice President stated.
He went on to disclose that some of the proposals that Government has received for the Skeldon Estate is for the generation of power from the co-generation plant there.
The Skeldon Co-Generation Plant – which has the capacity to produce 30 megawatts of electricity using bagasse from the sugar process – was designed to produce excess power that would be exported to the national grid. However, the plant is no longer working as a co-generation system given the closure of the sugar factory.
Back in October, Jagdeo had disclosed while addressing the retrenched sugar workers at Skeldon that discussions were ongoing with a number of potential investors who want to operate the co-gen plant to sell power to the Government.
“We are having discussions with a number of people who want to do a joint venture at Skeldon. The problem is that most of them don’t want to grow cane for sugar, they want to sell power to the Government and they want a price for the power which is extraordinarily high on a long-term contract,” he noted.
Jagdeo had explained that if Government purchased power at the rate being proposed, it would be twice as expensive as Guyana producing power from natural gas and Government would not be able to cut the electricity prices.
Nevertheless, the Vice President had pointed out that Berbicians, especially those displaced sugar workers, could tap into the vast opportunities directly from the oil and gas industry.
“I met with all of the people and they are looking for hundreds of workers and cannot find enough workers. These are good-paying jobs. The problem is how we get people from Berbice to work in the oil and gas industry,” he had stated.
Government has since announced that the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) training facility at Port Mourant will be expanded to accommodate training for persons desirous of working in the oil and gas sector.
“We need about 600 to 700 welders for the oil and gas industry. Not everyone has to go back to the sugar industry, because the oil and gas industry – the pay will be significantly higher than in the sugar industry, even with all of our efforts to reopen,” Jagdeo had noted.
Meanwhile, running along this same line of creating employment opportunities for communities in the sugar belt that were devastated by the closure of the estates under the coalition regime, the PPP/C Government is undertaking a series of initiatives that will see the creation of more than 4000 job opportunities along the East Coast Demerara (ECD) corridor over the coming years.
In fact, at the Enmore Estate, which was also shut down in 2017, Jagdeo explained that Government has allocated a 10-acre plot of land for development that will generate between 500 and 700 jobs in Enmore and surrounding areas.
This, he noted, coupled with the recent agreement signed with Guysons K+B Industries Inc (GKB) – which will transform the Enmore Packaging Plant into a modern oilfield service centre and manufacturing facility – will see even more retrenched workers being hired.
“So, that can take care of a lot of the employment from displaced sugar workers, … others in the areas between just these two facilities in Enmore,” the Vice President said.
Additionally, Jagdeo pointed out that Government has also budgeted monies to build an industrial estate in the Enmore-Foulis area that will not only benefit the displaced sugar workers but also other citizens from along the East Coast corridor.
“So, these three initiatives alone will generate, we believe, close to 4000 jobs on the East Coast… So that is what we intended to do at Enmore to generate employment,” VP Jagdeo said. (G8)