…on sugar?
The Government spokesman announced that the Special Purpose Unit (SPU) – set up to dispose of the four closed sugar estates may “open” them again. Now, isn’t this what your Eyewitness has been pleading for – with arms raised to the heavens -from the beginning of the debacle? Not to mention the Govt’s own CoI!
The geniuses who made the original decisions have now confirmed they don’t know their a55 from their elbow when it comes to agriculture in general, and sugar production in particular.
What seems to have escaped them is that we’re not only located in the tropics, but we have fertile soils, which, combined with heavy rainfall, guarantees the abandoned sugar fields will become “jungle” within a year. And the drainage and irrigation canals will be so overgrown with grass – antelope or elephant – bulldozers would be able to crawl over them!! Can you really sell a budding jungle to investors for the price it cost us to create those fields in the first place?
But let’s say it’s a case of “better late than never”. Does the SPU fellas (and felines) know that most of the equipment from Wales has been cannibalised – primarily to Uitvlugt?? This confirms what the workers of Wales had said from the beginning: their factory was in a better condition that Uitvlugt. But who listens to workers who’re using the equipment on a daily basis? What do they know? Certainly not as much as an Agriculture Minister who wouldn’t recognise a sugar clarifier if one crept up on him and bit him on his behind!!
So the other question is: Where will the SPU get the financing to start up production again?? Wouldn’t this have been just the same amount of money the Sugar CoI had recommended be injected into GuySuCo for three years, until the whole organisation can be brought to a point of sale?? And wouldn’t they have to re-hire the same folks they fired? But now, with their “severance” in their hands, will they want to return to the scenes of their humiliation?
The whole exercise raises the question of why the arbitrary decision was made in the first place. It certainly wasn’t a decision that made economic sense, since it’ll now have to be reversed – and cost billions to boot!!
It didn’t make political sense either – since even if there were some sugar workers who were teed off against the PPP, they’ve now all returned to the fold, after they were thrown to the dogs!
The only answer is revenge. The PNCites remember Burnham shuttering Leonora estate because it was the centre of PPP militancy.
And bettered him with 5,700 at one blow!!
…on the Oil Messiah?
There’s quite a difference, we Guyanese know, between “guitar” and “mouthtar”! That is, between actions and words. Everyone can mouth off, but few can do, especially when it comes to these PNC Ministers. So, at the Oil Summit, there were quite a lot of eyes rolling around in their sockets when Raphael “Nassau” Trotman spoke about agriculture not being the deliverance for Guyana.
There were even a few chuckles!! Does “Nassau” know that agriculture needs people who are willing to get into the fields where the crops will be planted? Has he heard the expression “once they’ve seen the bright lights, you can’t get them back on the farm”? If he didn’t, he should ask himself why, even though unemployment is sky high, none of the unemployed from Georgetown jumped into the cane fields – even though the pay was supposed to be astronomical!
One test is whether the $23 million for agri in Mocha, BV, Buxton and Ithaca will be sustainable!
Bets anyone??
…on FDI?
Since the beginning of “developmental economics”, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was the Holy Grail that would lead poor countries into the ranks of the “First World”.
Why doesn’t GO-Invest reveal the culprit who placed the ad to chase FDI away? Was it an “insider”??
