MINISTER of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, has said that the Rose Hall Sugar Estate, East Berbice Corentyne will soon see smoke coming out of its chimney with the investment of funds to clear more additional hectares of land for cultivation.

The Minister made this declaration recently in the National Assembly as the house discussed the supplementary funding requested to provide additional resources to facilitate the rehabilitation of 1,572 hectares of lands at Albion, Blairmont, Rose Hall and Uitvlugt estates.

Against this backdrop, he said that this investment is very important as the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) was on the verge of destruction before the People’s Progressive Party/Civic entered office in 2020.

“We are hoping with the development of these lands, the lands that were abandoned by the APNU+AFC at Rose Hall, where you have forest now grown, we have to clear those lands, do retilling, do replanting to bring up the hectares so that Rose Hall will have enough cane to grind,” the Minister said.

As such, he said that by the end of September, Rose Hall will begin production soon even as he noted that this is a promise that the government made and will be bringing that to a reality.

Mustapha added that approximately 1,100 workers that were fired under the previous administration are once again in employment at the Rose Hall estate.

Giving a breakdown of how many hectares will be rehabilitated at each estate, he said that some 660 hectares will be cleared at Rose Hall, 600 at Albion, 180 at Blairmont and 132 at Uitvlugt.

With these additional lands, he said that this will increase the amount of sugar produced and noted that this year’s target is 60,000 tonnes while next year is 100,000 tonnes and this will contribute to those targets.

The Assembly further approved the requested sum of $1,510B.