…on sugar
Your Eyewitness was hopeful GuySuCo had learnt a lesson after the government dropped their atomic bombshell on the people of Wales — that their estate was going to be closed — without uttering a word of warning to them. The company’s reps recently concluded two meetings with the people of Wales and Uitvlugt. But after listening to them, your Eyewitness isn’t so sure.
Over at Wales, things got rambunctious; and why not? Losing your job with nothing in sight to pick up the income slack doesn’t exactly calm the mind. But at Uitvlugt, the media reported things were positively staid. And again, why not? The GuySuCo hirelings promised that rather than shuttering Uitvlugt, production would be ramped up from last year’s 16,000 tonnes to an amazing 40,000 tonnes by 2020!!
The only thing that could stymie those plans were the 400 cane cutters from Wales who’re refusing to schlep the 20+ miles back and forth from their homes — in addition to whatever miles within Uitvlugt they have to traverse to cut cane.
So what if they’d probably have to leave home at 3am in the morning? Cane-cutters are beasts of burden, aren’t they? So what if the labour agreement of ALL sugar workers states that they can’t be transported more than 10 miles to work?
But stating the situation like that, GuySuCo’s being too clever by half, and the workers know this. They may fetch tons of cane on their heads daily, but they aren’t soft in the head. This is the old divide-and-conquer routine perfected by the British. First it was indentured servants against freed slaves. Then it was waves of new indentured labourers against expired-contract indentureds. Now it is Wales vs Uitvlugt!!
Fact of the matter is Uitvlugt can’t — from its present 16,000 tonnes — get to 40,000 tonnes by 2020, even if the manager of Uitvlugt stood on his head on the theoretical numbers he threw out. First of all, at the depressed price of sugar, which farmer will be willing to get into cane farming?? Even if by some miracle they achieve milling 105 tonnes of cane per hour (which ain’t going to happen from the present claimed 85 tonnes), and work 24 hours a day seven days a week for the average 30 weeks of both crops, this will amount to 529,200 tonnes of cane. At the ratio of 13.23 tonnes of cane to produce 1 tonne of sugar which obtained last year, this amounts to 40,000. What a coincidence!!
Fact is: if all those variables were true, at 85 tonnes cane per hour, 32,000 tonnes of sugar should’ve been produced last year, rather than 16,000 tonnes!!
Something’s rotten at the estate of Uitvlugt!!
…of the City Council
So the garbage contractors haven’t been paid for months, and they’ve withdrawn their service. What else is new? And what else did anyone expect? What happened to all the garbage trucks the City owned, plus their drivers? Any self-respecting municipality, noting that its expenditures were out of whack with its income, would’ve tried to cut expenditures even as it sought to increase its income, no? Not THIS Municipality, led by its ‘gang of four’, thank you! They been spending on themselves, their friends and families to such levels that they’ve made Simona Broomes look like Cinderella!! Why does each of them need all those bodyguards – even for retired Mayor Hamilton Greene? Do they fear citizens would attack them for not performing their duties?
The Town Clerk now has a Deputy Town Clerk and two Assistant Town Clerks!! Do they really need a PR Department larger than OP’s? What about all those chauffeurs, gardeners, cooks etc?
But style trumps substance with the PNC, doesn’t it?
…of the Speaker
The Speaker lamented that the decorum exhibited by the MPs in the hallowed halls of Parliament has fallen to new lows.
How does he describe his own “decorum” in treating Opposition MPs so despicably?
