Dear Editor,
I am appalled when I read an article in the Stabroek News dated 22nd August 2025, captioned, “Former GuySuCo executive blisters Govt over sugar”, in which Mr Vishnu Panday, a former Estate Manager and Agriculture Director, blamed the PPP/C Government for the current state of the sugar industry.
The WIN candidate claimed that “It was the PPP/C from 1992 to 2015 that crippled the sugar industry. And I repeat that it was the PPP, for 23 years, that crippled the industry. And like taking off a leg to survive, the APNU said we have to close some estates to survive.” I was utterly flabbergasted at this bold-faced lie and deceitful utterance by a man who until recently vehemently attacked the previous coalition Government for the destruction of the sugar industry.
Recently, he was at a meeting at Skeldon, and some private cane farmers stated that this man has no right to speak about sugar. They were unanimous that when he went to Skeldon Estate as the Estate Manager, the production and productivity began to decline year after year. In fact, in 2004, the tonnes of cane per hectare was 88.43, and thenceforth the decline was steady, and by 2012 it was a mere 52.72 tonnes per hectare.
Is this the legacy of a man who claims to be the most competent agriculture expert in the industry?
Panday spent more than twice the number of years which he claimed that the PPP/C “crippled the industry” at the helm of the various estates: Wales, LBI, Skeldon and Enmore.
The question is: what do these estates have in common? They were all closed due to the opposite of the Midas touch from the great sugar expert. These estates received his “vardhan” (blessings), and they crumbled to the ground.
It is important to note that during all these decades of Panday’s involvement in the sugar industry, not once did he even mention that the PPP/C Government was the cause of the industry’s collapse. Now he has claimed and lauded that the APNU/AFC did amputations to enable the industry to survive.
It is interesting to note that when these estates were “amputated”, he was given alternative employment with the Special Purpose Unit (SPU). He was the Board of Director with NICIL. Perhaps he can inform the public what happened to the $30 billion syndicated bond which was supposed to support GuySuCo and its remaining estates: Uitvlugt, Blairmont and Albion. I know that he cannot do so because he was part of the squander machinery. The $30 billion could have kept all the estates open and restructured the industry. Perhaps Panday did not read the Coalition’s COI.
This man was with GuySuCo under the PPP/C Government up to 2015 and cannot name a couple of things which he achieved. He was with the Coalition, and again he achieved nothing. Then lo and behold, he was given another opportunity under the PPP/C to right his wrongs from 2020 to 2024, and true to his nature, he failed again.
He was anointed as the Director of Agriculture under the PPP/C Government and given a free rein by the Minister of Agriculture to do as he sees fit to increase cane production and productivity – and what did he do? He came down like a tonne of bricks on all and sundry, spewing his inimitable arrogance in all directions.
During all these years as the Agriculture Director, all he could have offered was “back to basics”. This is laughable. Everyone knows the “basics” in GuySuCo. In these days of severe vagaries of the weather conditions, acute shortage of labour, decreasing TCH and changing dynamics, Panday had absolutely nothing to bring to the table except gloating and his knowledge garnered from years of failure and demotivating everyone he came in contact with.
He cannot apply anything to the changing dynamics of the sugar industry. He was simply a sailor who could sing with gusto, his failures masked as achievements.
It must be recalled that Panday had a clash with Sasenarine Singh and again resigned since he claimed that they have opposing views on the way forward. This was in February 2021, when he was appointed once again as the General Manager at Skeldon; this time to create an action plan to reopen the estate.
The fact of the matter is that Panday felt that by virtue of his decades of “experience” in the sugar industry, he should have been the CEO and not Sasenarine, whom he claimed cannot manage a “dynamic industry” and is a “misfit”.
Time has proven that he was the “misfit” and that all he could do was babble “intelligently”.
During his short tenure at Skeldon, Panday failed to achieve any of his objectives in the action plan, and it was not about Sasenarine Singh. He wanted to operate autonomously since he “knows all about sugar”. He mistakenly believed that he should be at the helm of the industry to receive his crowning glory. Unfortunately, he was given every opportunity to prove himself, and he failed miserably.
Now he is espousing himself as the agriculture expert for the WIN Party, where he feels that as the one-eyed man he will be the “king”. However, he has failed to realise that he has nothing to prove to the Guyanese people that he is capable of bringing any progress to the agriculture sector. The sector is already in capable hands.
The WIN is just a party of disgruntled old men who believed quixotically that they had been given a “raw deal” and saw that party as the last stand.
I want to assure Panday that he has just squandered whatever little goodwill remained in his legacy, and he will surely face a future in ignominy.
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
