Dear Editor,
I HAVE read with absolute disdain the continued vicious attack on the PPP/C Government for implementing measures to ensure the survival and ultimate viability of the sugar industry.
There is no doubt that one particular individual who probably feels that he is the sugar czar despite his lack of success in that area among other failed business ventures continued to rehash and regurgitate the same verbiage ad nauseam in his quest for relevance and vengeance for not getting the position he wanted.
He has now become an expert in home affairs, health, oil and gas, education, sugar, rice, NDIA, infrastructures and can literally run this country whilst sipping a Diet Coke. It would seem that instead of the CEO of GuySuCo he now aspires to be the President of Guyana. It would seem that this man’s hunger for publicity and power will never be satiated.
When he was a member of the GuySuCo Board he felt ethanol was the savior for GuySuCo, at one point he felt that tilapia was the salvation instead of sugar, at some point recommended that ‘bull plough’ should be used for tillage and then he felt that the estates should be closed.
This man has a myriad of solutions and harebrained schemes, no wonder he failed in all his business ventures. His pretentious cries of corruption will only reverberate within the cavity of his cranium. No one takes these empty cries seriously without hard facts and only assumptions are forthcoming.
What the Opposition and some naysayers fail to realise is that: the cost of resuscitating the sugar industry until now is just a miniscule of the cost of destruction which it inflicted in all areas of operation.
The APNU/AFC should itemise the massive cost and make a comparison to what is now being spent instead of vomiting the same garbage repeatedly in Parliament. The Minister of Agriculture made light work of their baseless attacks.
This is barefaced absurdity to deliberately destroy the estates and then question the cost of rehabilitation. The coalition also displaced the labour force when they closed the Estates causing thousands of workers to seek alternative employment or flee abroad with visitors’ visas.
It was not only the closed estates but the wage freeze in GuySuCo from 2015 to 2020 created a new wave of exodus from the industry. These workers reminisce the dark days of Burnhamism. Today, GuySuCo is faced with a labour shortage due to the preceding factors. The Coalition destroyed the human factor which they saw as pro-PPP and in so doing annihilated tens of billion dollars in fixed assets. But GuySuCo is overcoming these; one day at a time.
I am of the firm and unyielding conviction that GuySuCo will be viable again. The new CEO and his team has their focus on: increasing the tons cane per hectare, the increasing tillage and planting, the continued mechanisation of the field and harvesting, reduction of the tons cane per ton sugar, the reduction of the burning to grinding interval and the trimming of wastages.
These will reduce the cost per unit and increase the production and productivity of the industry. These are not ‘rocket science’ and with the critical financial support of the government to a certain point, the strong support from the workforce and the unyielding will of the GuySuCo team this will be achieved in no time.
Let the naysayers chew on their nails and wait. Arnold Schwarzennegger, six-time Mr Olypmpia, former Governor of California and famous movies star, once said that, “If I would have listened to the naysayers, I would still be in the Austrian Alps yodeling.”
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf