Dr. Jagdeo calls out Ramjattan for ‘duplicitous nature’

VICE-PRESIDENT, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, on Thursday, called out the Alliance For Change (AFC) Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, for being “deliberately deceptive” and using vulnerable sugar workers to push his own political agenda even though his party, while in office from 2015-2020, completely disregarded the sugar industry.
The Vice-President, during a press conference on Thursday, reminded the Opposition Member of Parliament (MP) that it was under the APNU+AFC that several sugar estates were shuttered and thousands of workers were retrenched.

Referencing the “duplicitous nature” of the AFC leader, Dr. Jagdeo said: “Everybody knows that Ramjattan has to sing for his supper,” adding that the Opposition MP has been spreading myriad misinformation within the public domain.

While dismantling the untruths, Dr. Jagdeo said: “Every attempt to help sugar and sugar workers has been opposed by the APNU+AFC Coalition, and they have opposed any funding to sustain the industry.

“Now [we have] the duplicity of it all coming from Ramjattan, who argued in the past for the closure of many estates; who justified laying off 7,000 Sugar workers by calling it “they [APNU+AFC] were not terminating, they were right sizing the industry”.
The APNU+AFC’s intentions, in his view, were clear despite the many excuses they spewed.
With thousands of workers being fired and losing their main source of income, he said that no job under the APNU+AFC coalition government was safe, and, more so, he reflected on the period in 2017, when the PPP joined sugar workers to lobby for their severance payments.

“We had to go to court; we were part of the protests in front of Parliament to get the workers their severance because they were severed,” the Vice-President reminded.
However, some sugar workers in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) were transferred to Blairmont and Albion, so they could not qualify for severance.
He related: “APNU refused to pay severance to those who were actually severed… these workers did not lose their jobs, so they couldn’t get severance…And then what we [PPP/C] gave was $250,000 to all the workers who were severed because the severance was a pittance.”

In 2017, the former APNU+AFC Coalition Government had announced the closure of several sugar estates across the country, leaving thousands of persons without jobs or sources of income. The move saw four sugar estates being closed and over 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.

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 PPP administration is hoping to “lift the industry from the ashes.”