Dear Editor,
Guyana Sugar Corporation’s Senior Communications Officer, Audreyanna Thomas’ letter, published on June 4, 2016 captioned “Ramotar confused business with politics on GuySuCo” seeks to vilify former President Donald Ramotar. My response to Thomas’ letter is not to lecture Thomas on journalistic ethics but to make reference to two points in the letter.
The letter states, in part, “in order to come to any intelligent conclusion about the prospects of GuySuCo, one has to examine how the Corporation got to this stage, and how it was governed and managed in the past as against how it is currently governed and managed”, and further “it went through a gradual process of deterioration of systems and structures, which included poor leadership and management” – “an industry that has undergone a systematic process of decay”.
Editor, the foregoing statements would give the impression to the ordinary man-in-the-street that the current cadre of management are completely new to the sugar company and so it’s an absolute necessity to investigate, probe and research on what went wrong with the company to make it become what it is today. But this is just a ‘hoodwink’ strategy. The fact of the matter is that the two members of the interim management, Errol Hanoman and Paul Bhim are two previous Chief Executive Officers of the same company not too long ago. Hanoman was a senior representative of the management consultants, Booker Tate, responsible for the affairs of GuySuCo, and after Booker Tate was removed in 2008, was appointed the CEO in 2009. He demitted this position in mid-2010 and Paul Bhim was appointed CEO until he was removed in 2014. Under Bhim’s leadership, GuySuCo recorded its lowest production in 23 years, when 186,000 tonnes sugar was produced in 2013.These gentlemen cannot so easily absolve themselves from the current financial travesty facing the industry. It was Bhim, as the CEO, who reported to the Economic Services Commission in 2014 that GuySuCo has incurred a debt of a whopping G billion. If the company is now asserting that it “went through a gradual deterioration of systems and structures, which included poor leadership and management” and a “systematic process of decay”, then they must take ownership as being part of the said deterioration process. It was only through poor leadership and management that the company recorded its worst production and financial performances from 2009 to 2014. The average production between 2009 and 2014 (the era of Paul Bhim and Errol Hanoman as CEOs) was 218,000 tonnes when compared with the previous five years (2003- 2008) of 272,000 tonnes.
The letter further states “these pensioners of whom Mr Ramotar speaks are highly qualified and experienced Guyanese” and “muster a cadre of the best minds in the sugar industry”. I would wish for the Corporation to show one iota of any successful intervention of any one of the “highly qualified and experienced best minds in the sugar industry”, who are now consultants, for the time they previously spent in GuySuCo before becoming consultants.
Editor, I am not in the “company of naysayers” as Thomas is implying Mr Ramotar has joined. I am in the company of those who would wish for a turnaround of the sugar industry, so that the lives of all sugar workers could be improved, and not to see them joining the breadline.
Yours faithfully,
Fredrick Yuvraj
