THE shuttered Rose Hall Sugar Estate is on course to producing sugar by 2022, but management of the estate has said that the facility will rehire most of its employees by July 2021.
Word of the estate’s reopening has already “bred new hope” into residents of nearby communities, who were once gainfully employed by the facility or benefitted indirectly through small businesses.

In 2017, the APNU+AFC Coalition Government had announced the closure of several sugar estates across the country, leaving thousands of persons without jobs or sources of incomes. The move saw four sugar estates being closed and 7,000 sugar workers losing their jobs.
The Rose Hall Estate prior to its closure was ‘home’ to some 2,500 sugar workers, but 1,181 of those were retrenched. The remaining workers from the Rose Hall Estate were transferred to Blairmont Estate over in West Coast Berbice and Albion Estate on the Corentyne.
In keeping with the new government’s agenda, work has already started at the Rose Hall Sugar Estate, which is slated to be the first of the threes shuttered estates to reopen. The ongoing work includes the planting of feeding materials, which will be used to create more planting materials for cultivation.

MORE TO BE HIRED
To execute this and other tasks, management of the estate has already hired 133 workers, said the manager of Rose Hall Estate, Aaron Dukhia, adding that 37 more persons will be hired in the coming week.

Dukhia told this publication that the estate will have about 1,900 workers by July/August 2021, and will have a full complement of 2,500 workers when the estate hires cane harvesters in 2022. Preference will be given to persons who were once employed with the estate.

“By the end of next year, all employees except harvesters will be fully engaged in cultivation… replanting and everything will be done by then,” said engineer attached to GuySuCo, Vijay Goberdan, who was responding to questions from Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha following a tour of the Rose Hall Estate on Saturday.
The minister, who was accompanied by Indian High Commissioner to Guyana Dr. K.J. Srinivasa and other high-level officials, questioned management of the estate about the challenges they have encountered so far and the general preparations.

Goberdan, in responding to the question, told the minister that the biggest task will be to replace critical equipment to improve cane preparation and assist with steam generation.
“The estate has old, conventional boilers and even prior to the closure of the estate, those were struggling to generate steam with mechanically harvested cane…what we want to do is to prepare for that challenge,” said the engineer.

The cost to replace the boiler is US$1 million (approximately G$200 million), so the initial plan is to upgrade the broiler, the draft system and water-management control systems.
“Some of the other challenges include the bad state of the building… the roof, platforms, and we have to replace the chimney, molasses tanks and factory pumps…we, however, hope to have the factory fully equipped by mid-2021,” said Goberdan.

GET DOWN TO BUSINESS
Minister Mustapha encouraged management of the estate to “get down to business,” as government has already approved funding for critical work.
The new Government of Guyana has already released $3B to GuySuCo, of which $2.2B will be used for re-opening of the three estates and the remaining $0.8B will be used to re-capitalise the current assets to help achieve outlined objectives.

The Rose Hall Sugar Estate alone is capable of producing up to 38,000 tonnes of sugar, but the acting CEO had said the estate will be starting the “first grinding year” (2022) with about 8,000 to 10,000 tonnes of sugar. And, as cultivation increases, production will be ramped up to 38,000.

Guyana in the past had depended heavily on revenue from sugar, which was one of the country’s largest income earners until it started ‘drowning’ in debt. The industry became insolvent mainly because the cost of production was higher than the market price for the commodity.

It was reported in the past that GuySuCo produced sugar at an average cost of US$0.35 per pound while world market prices have averaged US$0.16 per pound.
Although the sugar industry has been considered a liability for years, the new People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) administration is hoping to “lift the industry from the ashes.”