–PM says party sowing seed of discord among citizens

SPEAKER of the National Assembly, Dr. Barton Scotland has disallowed a request by PPP members of the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services to hold public forums in Regions 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the future of GUYSUCO and the sugar industry.
In a statement issued on Monday, the PPP said it was the Committee’s intention to meet with various stakeholders within the identified communities between June 7 and 21 to discuss with them and hear their views on the sugar industry before preparing a report for submission to the National Assembly. However, the chairman of the committee, Junior Finance Minister, Jaipaul Sharma has not made any complaint about the Speaker’s decision and other Government MPs who sit on the committee seemingly bemused when Guyana Chronicle sought a comment from them on the issue. “I don’t know of any decision to meet with these communities, I don’t know of this,” Minister within the Ministry of Natural Resources, Simona Broomes, a member of the ESC, said.
According to the PPP, in accordance with Standing Order No. 95(8), approval was sought from the speaker for these public forums to be conducted. That approval was sought on May 31, but on Monday, the Committee was informed via the Clerk of the National Assembly that approval was not granted.
The party said the non-approval constitutes “another attack on Parliamentary democracy by the Speaker” and the party called on the Speaker to reverse his decision. “Further, we view the rejection of this request as nothing short of an abuse of power and an undue interference with, and restriction of, the democratic right of Parliamentarians to properly represent their constituents and the reciprocal constitutional rights of these constituents to receive information from and exchange views with their elected representatives,”the Parliamentary Opposition said.

Wild cat campaign
However, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, who is also leader of the Government’s business in the National Assembly, described the statement by the PPP as a “wild-cat campaign to stir disquiet and disaffection on all fronts.”
The Prime Minister told the Guyana Chronicle that sections of the PPP are resorting to “racist advocacy and, on social media, they elicit responses ranging from “civil disobedience” to ” partition” in a contrived campaign to sow discord and division.” He said the party has been trying to hijack the committee to foster its propaganda about the coalition government’s handling of the sugar industry.

Nagamootoo said too that the PPP’s attack on the country’s parliamentary democracy has been “relentless” and noted that the Speaker has been subject to “character assassination and defamation.” “The opposition PPP wants to masquerade as the Government and is trying to usurp the functions of the elected Assembly to foster its campaign of disruption and division. Our parliamentary democracy remains strong and unassailable,” the Prime Minister assured while adding that the Speaker is the image of our independent Parliament and as Leader of Government Business in the House, I am committed to His Honour’s decisions to protect the efficacy of our Parliamentary democracy,” the Prime Minister said.
Government had held extensive public consultations with key stakeholders on the future of GuySuCo of which the PPP participated. However, that party had failed to submit its proposals to the Government for a decision to be made on the future of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and the sugar industry, even though Government had sought to engage them and other stakeholders, with consultations starting since late last year. One of the stakeholder organisations that was engaged in the process- the Guyana Agricultural and Workers’ Union (GAWU), had submitted its proposal document which was adopted by the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE). Irfaan Ali, who led the Opposition side during the consultations, had said that the party was not prepared to make its recommendations until the Government had presented a socio-economic study and an economic feasibility study.

State paper on sugar
Only recently the government 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 amalgamate [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 amalgamated and the factory at Rose Hall is to be closed.”
Holder 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.
“The process will result in improving the relationship with some cane cutters, estate staff and about 1,710 private cane farmers. These adjustments mean that GuySuCo would be scaled-down into a more efficient entity that focuses on producing sugar to satisfy the domestic and foreign markets that provide preferential access to our sugar. This entails taking advantage of the opportunity to merge better performing lands to operate factories more efficiently,” Holder said.
But even as there will be a major restructuring of the industry, GuySuCo is required to retain many of its workers for all operations on the merged estates or factories and those employees are to receive leased lands from the sugar company to engage in crops to be decided by both GuySuCo and the Ministry of Agriculture. Additionally, the Minister said GuySuCo plans, apart from restructuring the estates and factories, to transfer to the state charges for the drainage and irrigation and health services that it provides to the communities, and around the estates.