Dear Editor,
It was with great shock that the news of the state of the Skeldon sugar factory and the estate generally was received. The Chairman of GuySuCo Board, Dr Clive Thomas, used words like ‘falling to pieces’ and ‘rusting’, etc. The state of the fields also seems to be bad, according to Dr Thomas.
How did this happen? Why was this allowed to happen? These are the questions that keep coming to mind.
After all, on December 15, 2015, the CEO of GuySuCo, with great pride, reported that the industry had exceeded its target for 2015. The target was 30,594 tonnes of sugar.
The highest production since the commissioning of the factory in 2009 was in 2014 when it produced 35,890 tonnes of sugar. The average production from 2009 to 2014 was 30,521 tonnes.
On September 16, 2015, GuySuCo credited Skeldon, along with Albion, Rose Hall and Blairmont estates, for making ‘major contributions’ to allow GuySuCo to surpass its target.
On September 16, 2015, it was also reported that Skeldon had exported 1,184,000 kilowatt hours of electricity to GPL for the month; up to that point, it had exported 24,184,000 kilowatt hours of electricity to the national grid, for the year 2015.
The good performance of the Skeldon factory was not a surprise for those that have been following developments in the sugar industry.
While it is true that Skeldon had/has problems, it is also true that a lot of work was done to correct them.
In passing, let me note that both GuySuCo and the media have been critical of the Chinese contractors for the problems at Skeldon.
This is not totally true. It is unfair to the Chinese!
The Skeldon factory was supposed to be like the Komati factory in South Africa. That was how it was supposed to be designed. The Komati factory produces sugar at US10 cents per lb.
The design was flawed. It was not the Chinese that did the design. It was Booker Tate. They designed the factory and they were the Project Manager as well.
It is for that reason that the board and management of GuySuCo, under the PPP/C Government, took Booker Tate to court for breach of contract.
By the end of the first crop in 2015, Skeldon was beginning to perform better. The punt dumper, as well as the condensator tank, the bagasse carrier and co-generation were all fixed.
Its performance was so promising that the management and Government (APNU/AFC) tried to gain cheap credit from the work of the PPP/C Administration, crediting the good performance to ‘no political interference…’
When the APNU/AFC regime took power, it employed four highly paid consultants, costing tens of millions of dollars per year to assist in the operations of the Skeldon factory.
We are entitled to know what work they have been doing to allow such deterioration in such a short time.
The talk about rusting parts, etc, suggests that no maintenance is being done at the factory.
We need to ask why?
Since the commissioning of the factory, the General Manager, Technical Services, has been tasked with the close monitoring of the factory. He submitted volumes of reports, none of which, up to May 2015, ever disclosed that the factory was ‘falling to pieces…’
Dr Thomas is reported to have said that not only the factory has problems, but the fields as well. This is a management issue.
It seems that the neglect, or to use a stronger term, the running down of Skeldon is deliberate. It appears that there is a coincidence of views for different reasons by some persons in management, the Board and Government to destroy the sugar industry, Skeldon in particular.
Some of the managers clearly do not want to seek solutions. Their position for a while has been to close estates. The regime hates sugar workers and this is clearly an attempt to shut the industry down.
At the last two elections, they set out to deliberately fool them with the promise of a 20% increase.
Recall, too, that Dr Thomas said they are (at least for the time being) looking to keep Albion, Enmore, Blairmont and Utivlugt. Nothing was said about Rose Hall, even though that estate is performing well.
Is this a signal that Rose Hall is on the chopping block?
From all the evidence before us, it is clear that this regime is moving to deliberately run down the industry to sell it or shut it.
This will be a worse disaster than the closing of the railways in the 1970s.
Sincerely,
Donald Ramotar
