…key agencies involved in preparation

By Zena Henry
AGRICULTURE Minister Noel Holder said government will unveil by this month-end a strategic corporate plan for sugar workers who might be laid off as a consequence of the ongoing restructuring of the Guyana Sugar Corporation.
Holder told the Guyana Chronicle that his ministry, along with representatives of the Finance Ministry and the private state company, National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), are currently establishing a “corporate vehicle” geared to addressing all aspects of the transformation that will see sugar workers re-oriented into other industries.
Holder told the newspaper that as recent as Thursday, members of the mentioned agencies met to work on the programme. He explained that his ministry is also supposed to meet with other key agencies to ensure a comprehensive programme. One of those is the Ministry of Social Protection to help the Agriculture Ministry implement its changes within the interests of workers.

He said too that one of the big plans, is leasing lands to sugar workers for the production of crops. This cannot be done independently, Holder opined. Rather, part of the corporate plan will involve getting workers into cooperatives to make it easier for them to access financing and support. He said that if workers are leased lands individually, and apply for a loan to buy a tractor for example, he may experience some difficulty in accessing that loan, but being a member of a cooperative, that would significantly help to increase his chances of receiving assistance. Apart from that, the corporate plan will provide training and other forms of assistance to adequately integrate workers into their new fields of livelihood.
Minister Holder explained that the estates highlighted in the State Paper unveiled on Monday are scheduled to close at the end of the year, after the last crop is reaped. “That will be it. So we have seven months to get ourselves in order before this [plan] can be implemented,” the Agriculture Minister stated. During his presentation on Monday, of government’s State Paper on the future of the sugar industry, Minister Holder told the nation that the sugar industry would be moving toward the production of 147,000 tonnes of the sugar annually, while returning the industry to a profit-making one. GuySuCo has been losing billions of dollars every year, while governments, present and previous, have in turn injected billions of dollars in subsidies.

Meanwhile, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) in a statement said the State Paper largely confirms what has been widely said by administration spokespersons in recent times. “The GAWU is disheartened that the “hard decisions” as Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman described it on Labour Day, will serve to wreck the lives of thousands of ordinary, decent, hard-working Guyanese and reduce vibrant and robust rural economies to a shell of their current selves. The paper does very little to quell our strong and significant concerns about the plans for sugar which we have registered with the Government and have shared publicly as well. We see the paper as largely a repetition of what we have previously heard from officials of the Government and the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc (GuySuCo), much of which we had reasons to disagree with,” GAWU said.
According to the union, it was told that there had been a sharp decline in the industry’s workforce between 2006 and 2015. “What is not said, however, is that the industry’s mechanisation programme was intended to address the very issue. Significant sums have already been invested by GuySuCo to convert its fields for mechanical operations. Moreover, we must remind that GuySuCo told the Parliamentary Economic Services Committee in 2014 that mechanisation would reduce costs by 20 per cent per annum and would cost $14B, an investment that would be repaid in two and a half years. It is dismaying, given the positive spin-offs to be had that mechanisation in sugar is not even considered as is evidenced by the rejection of CDB funds for further mechanization,” GAWU said.
It was noted that in 2014 GuySuCo made losses of up to $17.5B, while in 2015, it amounted to $18.1B, 2016 it was $12.1B, and is expected to lose more than $12B, this year. For the same period, government has injected subsidies to the tune of $6B, $12B, and $11B respectively. The industry is expected to be subsidized with around $18B this year.
The A Partnership for National Unity +Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Government has proposed however that sugar be produced at Albion-Rose Hall, Blairmont and Uitvlugt-Wales estates to meet local and regional demand. The company said it will retain as many workers needed for all operations on the merged estates/factories. Those who will go into farming will produce crop types to be decided by the GuySuCo and the Agriculture Ministry. Should all the workers express interest, the new venture would have to cater to some 10,000 persons.