Ramjattan wickedly wages war and vengeance on sugar workers

Dear Editor,
Just in case anyone forgets, through NICIL, the Government between 2016 and 2019 usurped thousands of acres of GuySuCo land. In particular, lands at Wales were sold off by the Government to hand-picked persons and entities. Across the country, 4,600 acres of freehold land, conservatively valued by GuySuCo at $80B, were transferred out of GuySuCo. We still owe that money to GuySuCo.
Since 1976, when the Forbes Burnham-led PNC Government clumsily nationalized sugar, the Government of Guyana, through illegal taxation in the 1970s, loans from GuySuCo’s accounts in the 1980s, the sugar levy, and transfer of land from GuySuCo to Government, owes GuySuCo billions of dollars.
As Minister of Agriculture between December 2011 and May 2015, I often reminded Guyanese and the world that any subsidy that GuySuCo might receive from Government since 2010 was no handout, but partial repayment to GuySuCo for the enormous amount of money owed to the corporation. Billions of dollars earned through the sweat, blood and sacrifice of sugar workers have been siphoned off by Government in the 1970s and 1980s, and again between 2015 and 2020.
Incidentally, GuySuCo is also saddled with a 2016 $30B loan taken by the David Granger-led Government through NICIL. Most of that money never led to any meaningful investment in GuySuCo.
Khemraj Ramjattan’s response, his only response up to Saturday, January 19, a whole week after Budget 2024 was presented by Minister Ashni Singh, was that the $6B subsidy allocated for GuySuCo is a waste of money. He demanded that the $6B be withdrawn from GuySuCo and added to the $4B subsidy allocated for the University of Guyana (UG). In fact, the allocation for UG is bigger than the budgeted $4B. There is also the allocation of over $1B that would go towards paying off the loans owed by students.
It is remarkable how obnoxiously obsessed Ramjattan and his colleagues in the PNC-led APNU/AFC are over the GuySuCo subsidy. Listening to Ramjattan and others, one would think that GuySuCo is the only beneficiary of subsidies from Government. No mention is made, for example, of the $5B subsidy given to Region 10 for paying the larger part of the cost of electricity that both private homes and businesses use. The rate for electricity charges in Region 10 is a fraction of what the rest of the country pays. This subsidy has been in place since the nationalization of bauxite in 1976. During his dictatorship, Forbes Burnham threatened to withdraw the subsidy because he maintained that the subsidy was always intended to be phased out. But Ramjattan and the rest of the Opposition pretend this large subsidy is nowhere in Budget 2024. In fact, cumulatively between 1976 and 2024, this subsidy is now more than $100B in today’s value.
President Irfaan Ali’s Government, like the governments led by President Cheddi Jagan and President Bharrat Jagdeo, have demonstrated integrity and honour in maintaining the electricity subsidy for Linden and Kwakwani for the foreseeable future. As the population of Region 10 increases around Linden and Kwakwani, and as electricity utilization increases in this fast-growing region, the subsidy keeps growing.
President Ali’s government continues to unconditionally honour the commitment made to residents of Linden and Kwakwani, even as electricity utilization increases significantly. It is approaching 50 years since this subsidy has been in place. Subsidies to GuySuCo have been in place for less than 15 years. It is also a subsidy that has always been on a sunset basis, meaning that it was always intended to be temporary.
Ramjattan and his friends ignore the fact that the GuySuCo subsidy maintains a productive sector of more than 17,000 employees and their families; supports the local economies of Regions 3, 4, 5 and 6; and provides infrastructural and operational support for drainage and irrigation in these regions at a cost of billions.
While attacking the GuySuCo subsidy, these charlatans are people protective of the now $5B subsidy to Linden and Kwakwani. We each must judge for ourselves. For me, there is no ambiguity – the position of Ramjattan and his colleagues in the PNC/APNU/ AFC is purely obnoxious racism.
To his credit, Ramjattan confessed this when they were in Government. Remember when Ramjattan famously, or rather infamously, screamed across to Bharrat Jagdeo, telling him that the PPP want to keep sugar open because the sugar workers and their families are their supporters?
A large part of the subsidy should in fact be considered as payment to GuySuCo for providing drainage and irrigation for rice and other agriculture, and for the residents in Regions 3, 4, 5, and 6. But keeping GuySuCo alive is not just about the sugar workers; the more-than 17,000 employees of GuySuCo support the economies of communities on the West Coast Demerara in Region 3, East Coast Demerara (Region 4), West Berbice (Region 5), Canje and New Amsterdam and Fyrish to Manchester in Region 6. The tailors and seamstresses, the shops, the markets the taxi drivers, etc. struggled when the sugar estates were closed and downsized. When the factories are not operating, these communities come to an almost standstill.
The bottom line is that the subsidy is not a handout; it makes economic sense. Khemraj Ramjattan, Moses Nagamootoo, David Granger and all their colleagues knew this in 2015 when they promised sugar workers and the Guyanese people that no estate would be closed, that SUGAR was “too big to fail”.
But there is something else that Ramjattan and his colleagues must never forget. It is sugar that kept their dictatorship alive in the 1970s, 1980s, and up to 1992. They must never be allowed to forget the more-than $100B in today’s value that they ripped out of GuySuCo through the shameful sugar levy. The sugar works have not forgotten how they took out billions every year from GuySuCo for almost 26 years, until the PPP ended the levy in 1997. But, in addition, they borrowed money from GuySuCo that amounted to billions also. Thus, our country is now paying back for some of the loans we took from GuySuCo in the 1980s. In fact, when the PNC and Burnham nationalised sugar in 1976, they used the windfall from high prices for sugar that emerged in the 1970s to pay off the debt Guyana owed to GuySuCo. More than US$120M, the equivalent of more than G$25B in today’s value, was paid to Bookers and others for nationalizing GuySuCo. That money was earned by sugar, but was used to pay a Guyana Government debt. It robbed GuySuCo of much-needed resources to recapitalise its factories and its field operations.
In 1974, when the PNC instituted a tax on sugar exports, the workers were robbed because the tax was based on the gross earnings, rather than profits. It meant that workers were taxed twice. By 1977, the workers were owed more than US$85M, almost G$17B in today’s value. This led to the famous and valiant 135-day strike, during which Burnham brought in 6,000 soldiers and public servants to work in the fields and factories, while jailing many sugar workers.
This is simply Ramjattan’s shameless, disgraceful, reprehensible vendetta against sugar workers. While making big promises to sugar workers in 2011, only a small number of sugar workers bought their false promises in 2011. When the false promises were even more extravagant in 2015, Ramjattan, to his utter chagrin, discovered that many of the small band of sugar workers they fooled in 2011 abandoned them and supported the PPP in the 2015 elections. Were it not for manipulation in the Region 4 votes in the 2015 elections, they would have lost that election and lost all the gains they made in 2011.
Ramjattan and his Opposition colleagues have ever since waged an unholy war against sugar workers.
Outside of the electricity subsidy for Region 10, the Government is providing more than $4B in subsidy for UG and also another $1.5B in loan forgiveness for students at UG. By next year, President Ali has promised to make UG free. Ramjattan and his colleagues had also promised to make UG free within their first 100 days in Government in 2015. Instead, they raised the fee and also introduced other charges and introduced VAT for educational services and items. They betrayed the Guyanese people.
People expect politicians to spin. But waging war and vendetta on innocent people is unequivocally evil and reprehensible.
Sincerely,
Dr Leslie Ramsammy