Dear Editor,
I have read with absolute disdain the continued vicious attack on the PPP/C Government for implementing measures to ensure the survival and ultimate viability of the sugar industry.
There is no doubt that one particular individual – who probably feels he is the sugar czar, despite his lack of success in that area among other failed business ventures – continues to rehash and regurgitate the same verbiage ad nauseam in his quest for relevance and vengeance for not getting the position he wanted. He has now become an expert in home affairs, health, oil and gas, education, sugar, rice, NDIA, infrastructures, and can literally run this country while sipping a Diet Coke.
It would seem that, instead of becoming the CEO of GuySuCo, he now aspires to be the President of Guyana. It would seem that this man’s hunger for publicity and power would never be satiated.
When he was a member of the Board, he felt ethanol was the saviour of GuySuCo. At one point, he felt that tilapia was GuySuCo’s salvation, instead of sugar. At some point, he recommended that ‘bull plough’ should be used for tillage, and then he felt the estates should be closed. This man has a myriad of solutions and harebrained schemes, no wonder he failed in all his business ventures. His pretentious cries of corruption would reverberate only within the cavity of his cranium. No one takes these empty cries seriously, without hard facts and only assumptions forthcoming.
What the Opposition and some naysayers fail to realize is that the cost of resuscitating the Sugar Industry is, until now, just a miniscule portion of the cost of destruction that was inflicted in all areas of operation. The APNU/AFC should itemize the massive cost and make a comparison to what is now being spent, instead of vomiting out the same garbage repeatedly in Parliament. The Minister of Agriculture has already made light work of their baseless attacks.
It is barefaced absurdity to deliberately destroy the estates and then question the cost of rehabilitation. The Coalition also displaced the labour force when they closed the estates and caused thousands of workers to seek alternative employment or flee abroad with visitors’ visas. It was not only the closed estates, but the wage freeze in GuySuCo from 2015 to 2020 created a new wave of exodus from the industry. These workers reminisce on the dark days of Burnhamism.
Today GuySuCo is faced with a labour shortage due to the preceding factors. The Coalition destroyed the human factor, which they saw as pro-PPP, and in so doing annihilated tens of billions of dollars in fixed assets. But GuySuCo is overcoming these setbacks one day at a time.
I am of the firm and unyielding conviction that GuySuCo will again be viable. The new CEO and his team have their focus on increasing the tons cane per hectare, increasing the tillage and planting, continued mechanization of the field and harvesting, reduction of the tons cane per ton sugar, reduction of the interval between burning and grinding, and the trimming of wastage. These would reduce the cost per unit, and increase the production and productivity of the industry.
Achieving these objectives is not ‘rocket science’, and with the critical financial support of the Government to a certain point, the strong support of the workforce, and the unyielding will of the GuySuCo team, this will be achieved in no time.
Let the naysayers chew on their nails and wait. Arnold Schwarzenegger, six-time Mr Olympia, former Governor of California, and famous movie star, once said, “If I would have listened to the naysayers, I would still be in the Austrian Alps yodelling”.
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
