Inclement weather during the past few days has delayed the commencement of grinding at all Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) estates.

President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) Mr. Komal Chand told the Guyana Chronicle that the rains have rendered the dams used to transport workers and canes to and from the fields inaccessible.

The start of grinding this crop, he said, will depend on the weather.

This newspaper made several attempts to contact GuySuCo on the issue, but to no avail.

However, the Corporation’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr. Errol Hanoman, at a recent forum, had said the company will start the second crop with its equipment in good order, ready to overcome the bad weather.

“In addition, we are going to bring on board contractors who will come in with their operators to work with us, and our intention is to do in 50 to 60 days, what, prior to 2005, we used to do in 110 days.

“If we can rehabilitate the cultivation in two to three years, rather than five years, that is what we are going to do,” he had said.

Hanoman pointed out since 2005, the Corporation has been unable to achieve its tillage and replanting programme, primarily because of inclement weather.

In 2008, the annual rainfall recorded was the highest in 53 years.

Currently, the CEO said, some 35 per cent of the cane fields are uneconomical to harvest as a result of poor yields.

This situation means it would cost the company more to harvest the cane and take it to factory than the revenue it would get from the sugar produced.

He said that GuySuCo, in an effort to correct this problem and turn around the industry, has implemented several measures, including the acceleration and expansion of cane cultivation.

GuySuCo Chairman, Dr Nanda Gopaul, had earlier in the year announced that heavy rainfall between January and March resulted in a shortfall of 6,000 tonnes in their production target for the first crop this year.

Some 265 hectares of cultivation at Skeldon alone succumbed to the heavy downpour, he said.