Dear Editor,

READING the disclosure by Sookram Persaud, in your November 30 edition, on the estimated salaries of nine of GuySuCo’s executive management personnel/consultants has left me speechless, especially when I ponder about the growing level of poverty of the ordinary sugar workers who toil in the fields and factories day in day out.

I just couldn’t believe the figures regarding the salaries on my first reading. I had to wait sometime to comment on this matter, just in case the corporation had wanted to refute Persaud’s figures; but since they haven’t done so, then it implies that Persaud’s figures are indeed correct.

But Persaud, knowing that much about the salaries of these high-paying officers, ought to have known that an additional sum of $1.2 million is paid to the CEO to take care of his income tax liability. His gross salary is therefore $5.2 million monthly; and that apart, he is also provided four (4) first class airline tickets to the United Kingdom per year.

On becoming a member of the Interim Management Committee, he was given the option of selecting from two choices: either to occupy the company house designated for the CEO, or to draw down a further 10 per cent of his salary as housing allowance for occupying his own house. He grabbed the latter. He also enjoys 26 days paid leave and payment of significant premiums for UK-based medical coverage for himself and spouse.

In the circumstances, whereby GuySuCo’s Chief Executive Officer and the Finance Director are earning astronomically high salaries, then something is terribly wrong with the Government, GuySuCo Board, and the CEO to assert that “things are really bad” at GuySuCo, so much so that it could not afford even an increase in pay or any day pay for bonus to the poor sugar workers.

The CEO is quoted in another section of the media — on November 30 — that sugar workers would not be receiving any production bonus or increase in their wages and salaries this year because the company is “facing a financial crisis, or what he describes as the “deterring factor”.

So how come, in the face of this “crisis and deterring factor”, the same company could afford this level of salary for the CEO and eight others? How could a country as poor as Guyana and a company as financially beleaguered as GuySuCo afford to pay this level of salary — that excludes the many other benefits and allowances, as Persaud pointed out?

Even a well-managed and profitable large company doesn’t pay its executive as much as US$300,000 per year, which is a little less than what the CEO earns.

The Finance Minister, in his budget presentation, stated that “the radical re-organisation of the sugar industry is a matter of urgency”. Will this “radical re-organisation” include revisiting the super salaries of these executives and consultants, since, as the Honourable Minister further added, “the economy continues to feel the drag of the dismal output” from this company? Or will it be business as usual?

Editor, it is but a shameful dispensation for the Government and/or the Board to sustain this astronomical salary level to these executives and consultants, especially when this corporation’s operating expenses are highly subsidized by the taxpayers of the country; who in the wake of this week’s national budget will have to “fork out” 14% VAT on their electricity and water bills, not to mention the imposition of VAT on several basic food items that were previously VAT exempted.

One would have thought that paying $12,900,000 per month to nine persons would have resulted in a noticeably positive turnaround of the sugar industry, but what is obvious is that the anticipated sugar production this year will be the lowest in 25 years. The production this year is a reflection of the current management input for last year. Last year’s production, which was gloated about, was not of their input where cane production was concerned, so their self-commendation was highly misplaced.

So what are these people being paid so handsomely for? To collapse sugar production to such a low level that it justifies closing down the industry or privatising it at any cost? If that’s the objective, then they are doing a darn good job!

Yours sincerely,
JOHN WILLIAMS