Dear Editor,
I believe that Guyana needs our prayers and that we need to unite. That was my first comment last night. But I will not allow Khemraj Ramjattan to get away with his abominable attack on sugar and sugar workers. He must apologise immediately to the sugar workers.
Ramjattan in his first appearance as the catastrophic event at the Camp Street Prison escalated last night, defended himself by blaming sugar. It was the dumbest, most ludicrous thing I have heard yet from this Government. This Minister, who is the highest paid Public Security Minister, when he did appear hours after the crisis had escalated, took time to blame poor sugar workers and to take a side-swipe at the People’s Progressive Party (PPP). He claimed he needed more money for his Ministry, but the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) could not invest enough money into the Ministry because the money was diverted to sugar.
Ramjattan’s first response was another betrayal of sugar workers. He did not admit that sugar was being repaid for the more than $100 billion taken from sugar in the 1970s and 1980s. He ignored the almost $35 billion (almost $10 billion since 2015) sugar brought into the Consolidated Fund from the European Union as earnings from the sugar protocol. He ignored sugar’s expenditure on drainage and irrigation and on recreation, housing, water, street developments and health. Sugar did not get a handout under the PPP or under APNU/AFC.
His attack on sugar was reprehensible, repugnant and an absolute betrayal from someone who persuaded sugar workers before 2015 that he was one of their champions. This is a man who promised sugar workers a 20 per cent increase, no sugar estate would be closed and in its time of difficulty he would ensure that his Government provides repayments to Guyana Sugar Corporation to help it cope with its difficulties.
Now that some of those sugar workers took him at his word and gave him and APNU/AFC a chance to govern, he blames them for his incompetence. The call for Ramjattan’s resignation is justifiable. Sugar is innocent and has nothing to do with what happened at Camp Street on Sunday.
Ramjattan disgraced and humiliated himself even as the security forces, including the prison officers, Police and firemen, were heroically saving lives of prisoners and protecting people. Given the magnitude of the fire and the threat of prisoners on the loose, the security forces must be commended for the herculean task of rescuing and gathering the prisoners and at the same time preventing the fire from engulfing civilian buildings in the neighbourhood. Their professionalism and efficiency were in stark contrast to the ineptitude displayed by their political leadership.
Whatever happen in the aftermath of the July 2017 Camp Street Prison fire, including the inevitable CoI, Ramjattan’s leadership was palpably weak, flawed, incompetent and egregious. He disgraced and humiliated himself, was flailing like a beached whale, desperate, hopeless and clutching at a straw.
There could not be a greater reason for resignation than another deadly fire at the Camp Street Prison so soon. David Granger and his PNC and APNU colleagues when they were in Opposition demanded the resignation of Clement Rohee for a deadly protest that APNU and AFC started and stirred. Worst yet, the most vocal person that called for Rohee’s resignation, not just for the deadly Linden protest, but for every road fatality, was Ramjattan. If the cap fits you, wear it. The cap fits Ramjattan. If he applies the standards he passionately advocated for Rohee, he will resign now.
Sincerely,
Dr Leslie Ramsammy
