Scores of residents, fisher folk, vendors, members of the business community and sugar workers came out in their numbers to protest the closure/ privatization of the Skeldon Estate.

A march commended this morning at 7:00hrs from Skeldon Estate to Republic square.

Government only recently unveiled its State Paper on sugar, noting that the industry here lies in a smaller sector, with reduced losses and cash deficits, but coupled with a separate and profitable diversified enterprise, which would ensure a viable future. Agriculture Minister, Noel Holder, said the ‘State Paper on the Future of the Sugar Industry’, will focus on the poorly-performing estates and have them shift from sugar to diversification.

The proposed courses of action are to merge Wales Estate with Uitvlugt Estate and reassign its cane to the Uitvlugt factory, since the estate is operating at 50 percent capacity. Sixty percent of its drainage and irrigation infrastructure is in a dilapidated condition. The corporation furthermore seeks to divest itself of the Skeldon Estate. The estates of Albion and Rose Hall are to be merged and the factory at Rose Hall is to be closed.

Holder had said GuySuCo would then consist of three estates and three sugar factories. The estates would be Blairmont on the West Bank Berbice, Albion-Rose Hall in East Berbice and the Uitvlugt-Wales estate in West Demerara. The three estates will be complete with factories and will have cane supplied from all five locations. By virtue of the amalgamation, the Enmore, East Coast Demerara (ECD) and Rose Hall, Berbice factories will be closed by year-end. In the case of Enmore, that factory will be closed at the end of the year when all cane would have been harvested and the East Coast Estates would be earmarked for diversification.