IN a 2004 BBC documentary titled, ’Guyana — Trouble in Paradise,’ longtime President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) and PPP Member of Parliament Mr Komal Chand, speaking on the likely ramifications of the removal of the European Union preferential market for Guyana’s sugar, coldly said, “it could result in the closure of some of our sugar estates.”
Mr Chand was not hesitant or uncertain. He was emphatic, decisive and clear. In commenting on Mr Chand’s remark, the documentary’s narrator, Rageh Omar, said, “the trade union leader paints a bleak picture.”

Then President Bharrat Jagdeo, was also featured in the same documentary , saying of the European Union’s move, “It’s an issue of bad faith and it’s going to lead to a lack of trust. This could cost us in excess of US$35M per annum.” At the time, GuySuCo’s sales to the European Union market amounted to 50% of its total sugar output and a mammoth 70% of its revenues. The EU market was an effective lifeline for GuySuCo. Without it, both Mr Chand and Mr Jagdeo knew sugar would become comatose in Guyana.

Mr Chand recognised this in his response to the removal of the preferential quota and knew instinctively that sugar would no longer be sustainable in Guyana. There was no grey area, it was stark and it was black and white — no EU market and sugar would become crippled. In the intervening period, a false grey space, which was out of sync with reality, was manufactured by the then political directorate. This grey area of pumping billions into the failing industry was done to sustain jobs which are widely known to belong to persons who constitute the core of political support for the then ruling party. The people of Guyana paid dearly for this as money which should otherwise have been dedicated to social services and infrastructural development were funnelled, by the tens of billions, into GuySuCo.

Though battling to preserve jobs in an industry which was producing sugar at a cost far in excess of the market price, the PPP government could not avoid closure of the Diamond and LBI estates. Be not fooled. There is a political quarter in this country which feigns concern for the plight of the sugar workers and which has been so doing for decades. Field sugar workers in particular are seasonal workers. They work preparing the land and cutting canes, but ‘out of crop’ they have to ‘ketch their hand’ at menial jobs, including catching and selling backdam fish, clearing land, cleaning trenches and canals, working in the rice fields and other such work. Sugar workers’ lives are no story of prosperity and glamour as some would make it out to be. Large numbers of field sugar workers live in perpetual, punishing, cyclical poverty. They are highly dependent on money from the back-breaking sugar field work for their sustenance. The former PPP administration knew this when it was in government and it knows this now.

Any group which claims to be concerned about the welfare of sugar workers would have been busy seeking to put plans in place to elevate these thousands of persons from their condition, not condemning them to it. For 23 years under the PPP regime what obtained? A clear policy of keeping field sugar workers in the field. There was little effort to diversify, despite sugar coming under globally difficult times, leading to both scaling back and closures throughout the Caribbean, from Jamaica to Trinidad.

When the EU pulled the plug after the turn of the century, rather than embark on an aggressive programme to diversify and transition the sugar workers from a life of dependence on feeble sugar, the PPP engaged in doling out billions into propping up the failing industry. A culture of mendicancy was formed, perpetuated and it prevailed. The annual bailouts led to a now entrenched belief that come whatever may, government is obliged to starve and deny other sectors of funding and treat sugar as a sacred cow by pumping tens of billions of dollars into the black hole it has become.

In the 2017 budget, $9BILLION was allocated to GuySuCo. This is $9BILLION which has to be found but which cannot be spent on roads, education, health services, public security or public infrastructure. The PPP pursued a policy of recklessness and irresponsibility, racking up a humungous debt of over GY$85BILLION by 2015. Since the Coalition Government took office, it has poured GY$33BILLION into the industry. The stark and unavoidable reality is that sugar, more than anything else in this land, is causing an immense strain on the treasury.

A programme of diversification, divestment and a contracted amalgamation is unavoidable. It is imperative that Guyana retain sugar operations to supply the demands of the local market and to supply the international markets it maintains.
This process need not require sugar workers being left out in the cold, or even being at a disadvantage. It does however require reorientation and refocusing. There are dozens of other crops which are viable and feasible and for which mechanisms can be worked out to ensure jobs and opportunities for business and industry are provided.

This is where diversification must be pursued in earnest. The fixation with cutting, fetching and loading cane must be banished. Sugar workers must not be duped into believing that they have a single opportunity to provide for their families. They are hardworking people who, from their demonstrable commitment in the fields, are prepared to pursue meaningful work and would be keen to engage in employment which does not condemn them to perpetual, cyclical, generational poverty.
Politicians who rely on sugar workers for votes must stop lying to them, deceiving them and using them as pawns in their quest for political relevance and power. Komal Chand and Bharrat Jagdeo knew the truth in 2004, they must speak it now.