Well…well…well. For the first time since Aug 2020, we witnessed a meeting involving GuySuCo in which horse dung wasn’t being shovelled at the Guyanese public. All that we’ve been getting from management was that production was exceeding “targets”; when it occurred for a week or too, then this was spun as the “beginning of the great turnaround”!! Never mind that the targets had been revised downwards so that they were lower than a snake’s belly! And when the crop finished and those targets were still missed, no one even had the grace to show up looking sheepish at their HD!!
In the meantime, the Government had to keep pumping money into a seeming black hole, and face criticism from the Opposition that it was all a boondoggle. This would have been totally unnecessary, if only those who’d been put in charge of the turnaround plan had not tried to hoodwink the Government and the Guyanese people!! Didn’t they realise that the sugar industry isn’t a matter of playing with numbers on books and spreadsheets, where you could fudge matters ad infinitum – as in “shadow banking”??
Sugar is real…it comes from a plant named sugar cane, and is then processed in a factory to make sugar. At the end of very year – while you could’ve bobbed and weaved – you can’t hide what you produced or didn’t produce. It’s a very old story, told best in “The boy who cried wolf” — in this case, the boy who cried “turnaround”!! After a while, even the friendliest has to read – not any writing on the wall – but the reading on tons of sugar produced! And it wasn’t good!!
How many times were we going to hear about rain? Or the floods that came with it?? Isn’t the very basis of sugar in our dear mudland drainage and irrigation, because of our peculiar topography? Isn’t that why it’s called “mudland”?? If the Dutch could solve the problem 300 years ago, why can’t we now?? We don’t need “man power” – we have machines with thousands of “horsepower”!!
Anyhow, it looks like the President’s patience has not only been worn thin – it clearly has completely evaporated!! And as one paper candidly reported, he read the Riot Act to the assembled managers of GuySuCo – from top to bottom. And being from the sugar industry, they should know – after 1872, 1896, 1903, 1913, 1924, 1939 and 1948 — what happens after the Riot Act is read. A whole lotta heads gonna roll, that’s what!!
What’s happening is a repetition of how Booker Tate was brought in, recommended and “modernised” Skeldon to “turnaround” the industry. They couldn’t execute, and the Government axed them too late.
And still get “bad name”.
…GECOM
Your Eyewitness is a tad confused. OK…OK…he knows you, dear readers, may believe this is his default mode!! But he does have his moments of lucidity – as now!! So, help him out that it’s news our esteemed GECOM Chair doesn’t feel an overall review is necessary on what went down within the GECOM system during the attempted heist of 2020. And this for two reasons: firstly, that it should be left to the courts.
After all, the courts will address the specific matters that are in contention and are brought to them in the form of a lawsuit! They won’t be going on a “frolic and detour” – as it was so quaintly put by some old English Court – and which the Opposition Commissioners want!! Their comments would be what we call a “gyaaf” and the Trinis call “old talk”!!
And secondly, the CEO will consider the matter in his report; so, wouldn’t the Conmmission be reviewing it in any case?
When it comes to Mingoing, watch out for misdirection!!
…the Ukraine War
Now, it’s not just a matter of “I told you so”, but folks are slowly beginning to see that now Russia has acquired the “strategic depth” it desired from the very beginning, it’ll now be willing to end the war.
