Since 2011, the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) had been lecturing the then governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic about what needs to be done to keep the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) from virtually collapsing in an age when the European Union price cuts and a regional decline in commercial activities as it came to the commodity were reshaping the future and face of the sugar industry.
These two parties insisted that GuySuCo was failing to achieve the required results as meeting both its financial and production targets, because it was being micromanaged by the PPP/C. They contended then that the PPP/C was pumping billions of dollars into the industry to keep it alive, because its support base was largely sugar workers and their families.
Regardless of the pressure brought on it by APNU and the AFC in and outside Parliament, the PPP/C forged ahead with its plans to restructure the industry through a process of mechanisation and cost reduction. Successive PPP/C Governments focused on addressing the deficiencies in GuySuCo’s management while exploring the viability of production added electricity, bagasse and ethanol from sugar. It would appear that with a little more effort and time, the PPP/C could have saved the sugar industry without sending thousands of workers home and placing their livelihoods in jeopardy. The Party’s posture demonstrated that it not only understood the devastating and sensitive realities governing such a move, but it wanted to be sure that every other option was explored and tested before moving towards a process of systematic downsizing, closure, or privatisation.
According to Presidents Cheddi Jagan, Donald Ramotar and Bharrat Jagdeo, sugar had a future, but turning the industry around and making it profitable required perseverance and patience. They saw nothing wrong with using taxpayers’ funds to keep the industry afloat as the experts worked and toiled to restore sugar to its former glory while redefining its future in a highly competitive era and dynamic trading regiment in place abroad.
When the Government changed in 2015 and the coalition entered office, citizens expected continuity of the PPP/C’s policies with regard to sugar. And those at the helm of the AFC and APNU encouraged them to think so by their rhetoric on the campaign trail. These parties went into every nook and cranny and communities in the sugar belt. They told workers that they would never close the industry or estates. They are quoted as saying that sugar was too big to fail. Sugar workers caught up in the moment believed the coalition leaders and President David Granger when he said that “we are not going to throw sugar out the window”, and “we are going to save jobs”.
The coalition was concerned about the mismanagement of the industry, which was no direct fault of the workers. That is what they were elected to do, but now it appears as if there is a policy shift since entering office.
The coalition’s policies at a glance point to a desire to preside over the decline of the industry and the decimation of economic well-being of its people. The fact that the Government has still not publicly made a detailed and formal plan available for consultation on the way forward for the industry is distressing to say the least, because thousands of people were forced into unemployment and their families’ livelihoods devastated because of the coalition’s failure to invest some more monies to keep GuySuCo alive in the short term as it worked out just how it could implement a practical plan to keep workers employed while undertaking newer reforms to restore buoyance and profitability of the industry.
Closing several estates was not a bold move as the Working People’s Alliance dubbed it in its belated statement. It was the beginning of a process of economic genocide committed on a group of people because of their political affiliation with a view of crippling the support base of one’s political competitor. The decision had less to do with the economic realities governing the industry and more to do with a desire by the APNU/AFC to undermine the workers’ unions which were seen as pro-PPP while reducing their influence and activism.
The truth is, Government did not have to downsize the industry in haste. It did not have to rush to Parliament for funds to pay the workers that it disrespected their entitlements, emoluments and severance. All the plans for turning the industry around should have been laid in Parliament and made public for debate and input following the work done by the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on sugar.
The Government ought to rethink its entire strategy towards handling the welfare of the thousands of workers given that it has now taken bread off their tables. People are more important than profits. Notably, the monies the Government argued that were spent to bail out the industry were the people’s monies and they were well spent on the sugar industry when one looks at the Administration’s unfortunate expenditure of billions of dollars on catastrophic projects and the enrichment of its own Ministers and financiers.
