Dear Editor
ONE of Guyana’s biggest hurdles to political reform and economic progress is sugar workers seeming blind and unstinting support of the PPP in the face of all available evidence that the PPP is a rogue organisation, and the fact that the PPP essentially crippled the lives of sugar workers themselves.

Sugar workers need to recognise that they have been used by the PPP. This is evident in the fact that it was sugar workers who consistently provided votes for the PPP to remain in office during its 23 years in office, and it is also the sugar workers who suffered much and probably more than most Guyanese, under the PPP’s terms in government. They were systematically abused by the PPP for political gains, the abuse beginning with the manipulation of the leadership of the union representing sugar workers.

Notwithstanding the fact that the majority of sugar workers did not enjoy any kind of welfare to speak of, discussions with a number of individuals revealed that a large majority of sugar workers were deprived of a proper primary and secondary education, leaving them for the most part without the skills to seek alternative job opportunities, incapable of appreciating what was happening to them, understanding Guyana’s own economic and political problems, and how they were effectively being maintained by the PPP, even with the use of taxpayers’ dollars just to secure their votes at election time.

Sugar workers need to seriously examine what they get from working in the sugar industry. They have to consider whether cutting cane is a viable career, or how they would like to spend the rest of their lives earning their keep. Are they satisfied with the life of a sugar worker? Is this something they would recommend to their children? Are their jobs secure? Is there much scope for advancement? And, can they see themselves being able to buy a house or car, or look after their family in times of need and send their children to university? If not, then they need to seriously consider alternative ways of earning a living.

Sugar workers and their families have been plundered by the People’s Progressive Party. They have borne the brunt of much political manipulation by the Peoples Progressive Party at the expense of their welfares. They need to be treated more fairly. The PPP has never done this.

Sugar workers must first recognise that they were engineered to their current predicament by the PPP. The passage of two-plus years of the Coalition’s administration would not have improved their situation had the PPP been in government, except, that a PPP government would have kept the estates open at the expense of billions of taxpayers’ dollars, and as they did to the Diamond Estate, gradually close out the severely distressed estates when it was politically expedient to do so.

Sugar workers must understand that Guyana’s sugar industry is coming to a close, and the most they can do is see what they can get at the negotiating table. They also need to thank the People’ s Progressive Party for effectively reducing their lives and available opportunities to next to nothing, when they had the opportunity to do much more than sink US$200 million into Skeldon, which marked the beginning of the end of the industry.

The PPP did not save them then, and they will never be able to provide alternative options for sugar workers, because if they did want to, they would have done so when they had the chance. Sugar workers can expect nothing from the PPP except another 23 years of using. Sugar workers must understand that there is no such thing as an educated sugar worker.

They also have to understand that the sugar industry was founded on the exploitation of sugar workers, and this will never change. It is unreasonable to support a political party or government that is responsible for destroying your lives. I submit that Guyana can only move forward if sugar workers dump the PPP.

Regards
Craig Sylvester