Leadership that failed to bring common sense to market conditions

Dear Editor,
The major factor contributing to the loss in the sugar industry remains leadership that failed to bring common sense to the changing global market conditions. All this loose talk of workers and weather is just that, idle talk. Jock Campbell and the Bookers Boys in the 1960’s and 1970’s also had major weather and workers’ challenges but yet their production was generally over 300,000 tonnes of sugar.
GuySuCo’s senior leadership failed to handle two fundamental issues over the last decade – the aftermath of the 2005 floods that brought havoc to the fields and fix that albatross around the neck of the industry – the Skeldon Sugar Factory. If stability was brought to these two issues very early during the Raj Singh ear, GuySuCo would have had much more time and resources to climb up the value chain into the sugar derivatives market, which is where it ought to be (ethanol, refined sugar, alcohol, sugar tourism, agro-energy and so on).
Let me be absolutely clear – raw unrefined cane sugar production is dead in Guyana. But yet since 2016, all team Hanoman has done at GuySuCo is complain; continued producing raw, unrefined cane sugar; failed to complete the reposition of the sugar industry up the value chain; and is now wasting billions on a doomed agriculture adventure – producing rice on sugar cane lands. Utter insanity! In the normal world, people like Hanoman would have been shipped off to the farthest island away from civilization with no fuel on the boat for the return journey.
This Granger administration, which has access to more enlighten strategies, refuses to move away from this doomed strategy, which is taking the sugar belt to the point of self-implosion. Do not take my word for it, look at the productivity and production in the industry in 2016 compared to all the years since 1990; the lowest and the worst in 26 years (see graph below).
If one looks at the graph above, one can find that the record under the PNC government has been pathetic and it is for a clear reason, they failed to engage the workers union in all major decisions. A house divided will never succeed and today Guyana is on the road to total and absolute failure if this pig-headedness continues under an aloft and arrogant Noel Holder who remains clueless strategically on what needs to be done to the sugar industry.
But I must commend the Granger administration for one green shoot of success on the sugar belt, what happened at the end of 2016. Under the instructions of President Granger, Minister Ramjattan was asked to lead a delegation to engage stakeholders on the solutions for the sugar belt; 500 days too late, but better late than never. I celebrate this initiative and want to commend the Granger administration for taking this vital step into bringing common sense decision to bear on the challenges in the industry.
Under Errol Hanoman, GuySuCo continues to suffer from a defective transformational leadership that has failed catastrophically on many levels from getting a grip of the systemic challenges in the field to bring stability at Skeldon Sugar Factory to moving the industry up the value chain. Divestment is a fool’s strategy; it will just end up as ghost towns on the sugar belt which is no good for Guyana socially and economically.
I am again calling on President Granger to engage competent talent in the industry and seek skilful analysis of critical performance data to drive a stabilization strategy in the industry. Since the intellectually bankrupt Raj Singh has left the industry, the condition of the industry has gotten even worst, which mean that the current leadership at GuySuCo is even more intellectually bankrupt at stabilising the sugar industry.
When will they bring real talent into the industry and stop playing politics with the lives of 15,000 families in rural Guyana?

Sincerely,
Sase Singh