Dear Editor

NOTHING that reads from the pages of Guyana Times, ever qualifies as truth much less fact; and its May 30 obscene Eyewitness column titled, “Fleecing Guyana…on sugar workers sweat,” again qualifies for this media description. This latest piece of abomination is the now familiar dishonest refrain that has typified this paper’s now numerous attempts to again blame the coalition government for the demise of GuySuCo.

Reading this putridity reminds one of the rabid anti-semitic newspaper Der Sturmer, owned and published by the offensive Julius Streicher, of middle-ranking status in the Third Reich, Nazi Germany, during World War II. His paper and its numerous articles aided and abetted the Nazi programme against the Jews. It falsified and contrived in the darkest recesses of its editorial pit, to advance a media mindset that constantly appealed to a depraved mind. Its language mirrored a thought pattern that defies description.

Such is the framework that Guyana Times and the referenced article above must be placed. It is the kind of media house, a veritable cesspool of miasma that will accuse a government that on its first day in office was presented with the reality of a collapsed sugar industry, hopelessly mired in a huge multi-billion debt. Such a national tragedy did not occur overnight, as this liar of a filthy journal would want the sugar workers and its readership to believe.
Just why the coalition would have wanted to punish an entire workforce, because of political party affiliation, for the criminal sins of the former PPP/C administration, solely responsible for the destruction of a major contributor to the national economy, and a sustainer of livelihoods, can only be answered by a horribly sick editorial staff that could churn out such political sewage as news? After all, these poor sugar workers were the victims of a reckless, political scheming plan by a political party which claimed to be working-class oriented

It is only an unconscionable collective such as the PPP/C which would have done just that, and did not even offer a line of solution, despite being invited by the president David Granger administration to participate in a national effort at resuscitating this once proud economic giant, the fall of which this former party administration precipitated.

It need not repeat that the current government sustained the industry with further billions of taxpayers’ money; and even though there had to be eventual terminations, all the latter had been paid, and offered post-sugar life opportunities, for further livelihoods. And quite contrary to the attempt by the Guyana Times article to portray surrounding communities as suffering, all of them have been offered socio-economic initiatives to offset the impact of changes to the industry that just could not have continued to gobble up funding when its production costs were four times the price for sugar on the international market.

It became imperative that closures had to take place, similar to those that had taken place under the PPP/C regime. How deceptive and unfair it would have been for tax- payers, to continue to fund a failed industry, just for the sake of ensuring its political support. One wonders what kind of economics such is described.

In seeking in the same article to further make fun of the NICIL/SPU raising of the $30B syndicated bond, is a case of damn if you don’t, and damn if you do. And to refer to Bharrat Jagdeo’s questioning the period of five years as being insufficient to repay both interest and capital, is to conveniently ignore what a loan with very strict disbursement conditions is intended to do – sustained by a development/work plan for the continuing operation of Albion, Blairmont and Uitvlugt Estates. In fact, Jagdeo has no moral authority to pronounce on an industry which he and colleagues had left on a life support, when they were voted out of office in 2015.

As a reminder, it is about the re-positioning of the industry in a modern manner, necessitated by the realities of an entity that can no longer be managed by Jagdeo’s ‘jumbie’ economics. Sugar moreover, the continuity of over 10,000 currently employed sugar workers, and sustenance for their families are being assured.
It has never been the intention of the coalition government to close an industry, that is an embodiment of Guyana’s political-socio-cultural economic history, as those who have been responsible for its debacle have been peddling in the devious columns of the Guyana Times. The fact of the loan is testimony to this determination.

Editor, it is a waste of good time and mental energy to be repeating so often, the story of a tragic instance in Guyana’s industrial history, since it has been well ventilated. But it must be asked of the Guyana Times, just how did it arrive at its attempt at misleading, by stating that the coalition doomed over 7,000 workers …and depressing the surrounding communities to “nasty, brutish and short lives”? This reporting trickery, clothed in all the known dark sophistries, is intended to convey the misinformed impression that this figure represents the entire workforce of the sugar industry. Utter lies, since a little over 10000 workers have been retained. Neither was there a “condign’’ lesson to folk, dubbed incorrigible supporters of their arch enemy, the PPP.

Regards
Earl Hamilton