Dear Editor
I AM happy that the quiet, but indefatigable Minister of Public Health Volda Lawrence has called out the PPP/C on the important question as to what it had done, as a government, with the $34.4B given by the European Union(EU); Guyana’s share of the EURO $1.25B that was given to the Asia-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) sugar-producing countries for important reforming measures, aimed at cushioning the effects of the drastic reduction of the EU purchase of sugar from sugar-producing countries in these regions.

Editor, I will be the first to state unequivocally that the coalition government has been extremely charitable in its public remarks/criticisms about the PPP/C’s criminal mismanagement of a once giant industry in which its thousands of workers were always perceived as specifically political support for the PPP/C, which lacked any genuine care and interest about their long-term welfare.

And I say this because it may be recalled that as far back as 2011, a leading African-Guyanese penned a letter in the Kaieteur News in which he appealed to a leading Indian activist, about doing something to help the PPP/C regime save the declining sugar corporation. Of course, such a plea fell on deaf ears.

One can only surmise that because genuine governments are supposed to be responsible and proactive in times of national crises–as the collapse of the sugar industry certainly was–that the coalition directed its efforts towards measures to salvage and save whatever could be possible from an industry, particularly ensuring the humanitarian needs of workers.

But it was this silence, coincidentally, that exposed and defined the true morality of the PPP/C, its politics, and its established cultural penchant for political immoralities. This national crisis, absolutely caused by the PPP/C, was treacherous, second only to the perfidy of Charandass in its planned use to induce ethnic insecurities among its political support collective, whose socio-economic fears were mercilessly exploited by a rogue opposition who did not have the moral decency to acknowledge its mismanagement of a once mighty industry, much less to join the APNU+AFC coalition government in finding a solution, although invited to do so.

One must therefore agree with Minister Lawrence when she accurately highlighted the PPP/C’s naked neglect of sugar workers, by asserting, “History shows that at no time was protecting sugar workers’ jobs a priority for the dishonest PPP.” She went on to emphasise that had the workers’ welfare been paramount, that the EU money would have been paid to GuSuCo, rather than into the treasury. Whatever sums were directed towards the recommended plans for the future of sugar and its workers, were instead disbursed by way of budgetary allocations, from which its future trail was difficult to track. No doubt that it was finally reported in a 2016 study that …. “Not all AMSP funding reached GuySuCo.”
And so, the pivotal question – where did all the money go?

This is a question for which sugar workers should have been seeking answers for the Accompanying Measures for Sugar Protocol (AMSP), from their former PPP/C government, but more so, from their union GAWU. For given such a sea change in the future direction of the industry that entailed a reduction in quota, with its likely effects on revenue sales, it was incumbent on the sugar union to educate its membership on what to expect, particularly with regard to the utilisation of the huge EU sum for what it had been planned to achieve.

Editor, GAWU is just as complicit as its political arm the PPP/C, for the tragedy that has befallen the giant that had once been sugar. It has been a tragic disservice to national integrity for the Jagdeos, the Ramotars, the Ramsammys et al, to have shamelessly lied about their collective role and responsibility in bringing economic stress on an important category of the national productive force that they call “supporters.’’ Every caring government that respects their support base endeavours to protect its best interests, inclusive in the national whole of socio-economic development; it is incumbent that such be done.

Instead, these so- called PPP/C leaders lived it up in their sumptuous mansions, while GuySuCo, slowly ground to a halt, with the treasonous shout by its former chairperson on the very first day of the new APNU+AFC government – “GUYSUCO IS BROKE”! That was the culmination of the criminal recklessness of the PPP/C cabal.

Regards
Earl Hamilton