Returning GuySuCo to economic viability

THERE’S no denying that GuySuCo is an indelible part of Guyana’s socio-political economic history. Its historical development would have originated out of the iniquitous plantation system that prospered off the broken bones of the tens of thousands of weary souls, whose contribution towards the enrichment of the few colonialists and their companies played no small part in laying the foundation for many Western European societies and the affluence which they now enjoy.

In the Guyana context, GuySuCo’s contribution to the socio-economic growth and development of the nation, on a sustainable basis, accords it pride of place on the list of national major economic entities, alongside those of the once-thriving bauxite industry, and of course, the rice, gold and diamond industries. For thousands, irrespective of ethnicity, it afforded many opportunities for self-development and the building of families, in the process of which many material worth were acquired. Call it a sustainer of communities, this ‘sweet thing’ called sugar, for indisputably, it was the proverbial ‘Goose’ that once laid the ‘Golden egg’, as so many benefitted.

It was as a result of this realisation of what sugar meant to so many, in terms of their livelihoods, that alarm bells started to ring, when, on the first day of office of the A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance(APNU+AFC) for Change Government, the unbelievable cry of “GuySuCo is broke” reverberated around the nation. The rest is now history, as the government responded to grapple with the country’s worst industrial crises. It was a challenge to which it rose, without any assistance from those quarters responsible for the shameful decline and collapse of a national earner.

We have always contended that this crisis defined what Guyana, as a nation, is in terms of political morality: Societal truth, particularly with regards to those responsible for what had been Guyana’s industrial debacle, seeking to dispose of their reckless and political opportunistic manner of managing a key economic contributor elsewhere.

That GuySuCo collapsed under its crushing burden of financial debt was no overnight or sudden event, as those who had optimum control for two decades of its mismanagement would want sections of this nation to believe. Instead, the sugar harvesters of this once industrial gem were mercilessly used to further the political agenda of those former political rulers for patently selfish political ends, without due regard to the accumulative toll such reckless actions, of incessant strikes particularly, coupled with bad weather and the equal debacle of the ‘White Elephant’ that is the Skeldon Estate that was to have been the new flagship of the Corporation’s survival, would have eventually caused.

It was inevitable that sugar, its production costs, would eventually not been able to compete with international market prices.

It was a most unspeakable act of administrative incompetency that spoke of an industry that had meant so much to so many thousands over the decades, and which human capacity could have only been seen in terms of dishonest political usage, rather than as genuine contributors to a very important industry and country. How could sugar not have been observed to be becoming gradually ‘bitter’, when its technological infrastructure began descending to a state of disrepair, such as the Wales Estate, the closure of which the World Bank had recommended since 2008? To have continued to expend taxpayers dollars on an industry just for the political purposes of constituency support could not have been more perverse than not effecting any critical overhaul of the system of sugar production.
Therefore, to have expected the current administration to continue with GuySuCo and its management practices unchanged, which would have meant subsidisation without end, and an equally unchanged workforce number was akin to throwing water in a barrel without bottom.

GuySuCo, at this time, is in the process of re-structuring, which has become an absolute necessity, if it is going to be salvaged, made to be competitive, and be able to continue to be an employer for the many thousands who are still in its employ, while contributing to the national coffers. No one should expect an overnight miracle, given the severe contraction of revenue earnings. And although this rebuilding has been slowed somewhat, because of the extant political situation, implicit of opposition threats to review terms of divestment of its identified parts, if elected to government, there are still those who are seeking wage increases for sugar workers.

Let it be known that there is no ‘state of emergency’, as far as the current state of affairs at GuySuCo is concerned, as prefaced a point of view in a media report. The fact is that the Special Purposes Unit (SPU) must be allowed to continue its vital mission of removing the corporation from its archaic culture of administration into the light of modern best practices. This should not be a battle for management of control of GuySuCo, or a preservation of privileges which the corporation definably can no longer sustain. Nor is the SPU a ‘squatter’, as derisively described. We can only implore a working together for the national good, first for retrieving a wrecked industry from the criminal mismanagement it has suffered, and second, for making sugar sweet again.

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