— 18,000 acres of land for cultivation in Region Six, $13.3B for roads
— gov’t willing to fund 10,000 scholarships in the region, says VP Jagdeo

SOME 18,000 acres of land in Region Six are expected to come under cultivation as government strengthens focus on agriculture to increase production, create jobs and enhance income for residents of the region.
Twelve thousand acres of those lands will be put under cultivation in Skeldon by scores of private cane farmers who were forced to close shop when the Skeldon Estate was closed by the APNU+AFC Government in 2017.
Aside from the 1,700 sugar workers who lost their jobs when the estate was closed, scores of private cane farmers who supply GuySuCo were put out of operation.
A group of these farmers, who met with Vice-President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo at the Classic International Hotel and Resort in Skeldon on Monday, lamented that the estate’s closure brought them to their knees and they are yet to recover. Many of them who took bank loans to fund cultivation of their lands have found themselves in a position where they could not meet or honour their bank payments.
Interest on these loans has also been accumulating over the years, and according to the farmers, it brought them great distress since many of them are still looking for jobs. Some 400 of the 1,700 workers at the Skeldon Estate who lost their jobs have been re-employed thus far, said Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo.
He said the government will engage the banks that are owed by the farmers with the aim of getting these banks to write off the accumulated interest owed by the farmers.
And in a bid to get the farmers to return to some level of financial stability and to pay off their debts, he said that assistance will be given to the farmers to cultivate some 12,000 acres of land.
Some of the cane farmers present at the meeting expressed an interest to return to sugar cane cultivation while others were interested in planting hemp, a lucrative crop, often mistaken for marijuana that government will soon make legal to cultivate on an industrial scale.
Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo, Sasenarine Singh told the Guyana Chronicle that all options will be explored. A ministerial team comprising Minister with Responsibility for Finance in the Office of the President, Dr Ashni Singh and Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha will report to Vice-President Jagdeo on a technical assessment of the land and other matters in two weeks.

EXPLORING ALL OPTIONS
“Let us get the technical people to explore all the options. It is about getting the lands that were originally designated in the original plan when this area was being developed to do Private/Public Partnership with the private farmers in cane cultivation to get that private element of the land into cane cultivation again,” he told this publication.
The lands to be re-cultivated are owned by several co-op societies and are very fertile, according to Singh, but will require investments from all stakeholders to be redeveloped, while pointing out that the private cane farmers were producing much more efficiently than the industry which indicates they are better managers of the lands.
Following the closure of the Skeldon Estate, the idea of taking the canes to the Albion Estate was explored but it was found to be not feasible.
When the APNU+AFC closed the Skeldon, Rosehall, Enmore and Wales estates in 2017, against a recommendation of a commission it had set up to inquire into the state of GuySuCo, some 7,000 sugar workers lost their jobs.
Hundreds of private cane farmers across the sugar belt also lost income as they could no longer supply canes to GuySuCo.
At the Wales Estate, parts of the factory were sold off as scrap iron, rendering the estate inoperable. Some 2,000 workers lost their jobs and 1,000 private cane farmers who supplied the estate were also left without an income.
Dr Jagdeo, speaking at a separate meeting at the Line Path Community Centre ground, told residents of surrounding communities that in an effort to address the woes brought to the Wales workers by the APNU+AFC Government, the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) Administration will be building the gas-to-shore project in that community.
The project is expected to generate 200-250 megawatts of power and will supply electricity to the entire country. It is expected to come on stream in 2024 and cut electricity cost by 50 per cent.

PROTEIN AND FERTILISER PLANTS
“It that area, we will probably build a protein plant, a fertiliser plant using the gas that we will bring on shore from the pipeline,” he said while pointing out that in West Demerara, a company won an Exxon bid to open a Shore base facility there. These investments, he said, will create thousands of jobs in the Wales area to absorb the number of people who were laid off by the Coalition Government. Many of the laid off workers at Wales have been employed due to the massive scale of investments in Region Three.
Over at Enmore, about 700 workers were laid off when the factory was closed. Dr Jagdeo said the government, in addressing the situation there, decided to shift the Enmore packaging plant to Blairmont and Albion. At Enmore, there will be two major investments as well as the building of an industrial estate at Foulis, which is next to Enmore. Together, these projects will create over 3,000 jobs.
At the Rose Hall Estate, Jagdeo said work has restarted but there are some difficulties in cultivating the fields as tractors and equipment ordered are taking a longer-than-expected time to arrive in Guyana due to the slowdown of the global supply chain as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“About 900 persons there who lost their jobs, about 600 have been rehired… we are hoping to increase the production there, maybe bring in some private partners to keep sugar going there,” said.
Meanwhile, at Skeldon, he said the government has been having a hard time reopening the estate and generating jobs but sugar production will return to the area but on a smaller scale.
Some of the lands will be utilised for high-end aquaculture, shrimp farming and processing of shrimp as well as hemp cultivation. These investments will create thousands of jobs, said Dr Jagdeo.
In addition, he said the government will be extending the road to Orealla by an additional mile, which will open up some 6,000 acres of land for farming.
“We are going to do that road, we promise to extend the road to open up more lands,” he said, noting that the government will work with farmers to put the lands under cultivation. Most of his comments at the community meeting at the Line Path Centre ground were repeated at anther community meeting held about three hours after at the Tagore Memorial Secondary School.
During the Cabinet outreach in Region Six on Sunday, the government announced a number of interventions for the region.

INTERVENTIONS
These include, 3,000 part-time government jobs for residents to supplement family income; 400 small business grants ranging from $200,000 – $250,000 for persons with viable business proposals; co-investing in the construction of an agro-processing factory at Black Bush Polder; construction of a new national stadium and urban centre at Palmyra; development of lands formerly owned by the Guyana Sugar Corporation at Palmyra; upgrading of the aerodrome at Rose Hall, Canje to a municipal airport to support increased tourism activity; $160 million for first phase of oil and gas hospitality training centre at Port Mourant; $50 million to equip the New Amsterdam Technical Institute to provide necessary skills training; high end aquaculture project, working with swamp shrimp farmers to increase production to one million kilogrammes (four times the current amount) to create employment; textbooks for secondary school children countrywide; $33 million to upskill human resources in the region through the Board of Industrial Training (BIT); Technical Vocational and Education Training (TVET) for 300 residents; feasibility study for new drainage canals to drain the water directly from the Savannahs to the Atlantic Ocean to safeguard against flooding; US$30 million state-of-the-art hospital to replace the Skeldon Hospital and upgrading of the New Amsterdam Hospital; willingness to invest in 10,000 online scholarships for persons in the region; $8.3 billion to commence works on the main highway from New Amsterdam to Moleson Creek; over $1 billion in farm-to-market roads for the region; and $4 billion for community roads.