Dear Editor,

THAT the coalition grossly mismanaged the agriculture sector is an understatement. They deliberately ‘scissored’ (or chain sawed) the national budgetary allocation for the sector, and to add insult to injury, they placed at the helm the most incompetent minister ever to hold that portfolio.
It was the biggest single blunder ever made by a government, and it did not only result in willful loss of billions of dollars in standing canes, infrastructures, machinery and equipment, but also, as karma would have it, cost the APNU+AFC its term in office.
This was the unconscionable closure of four grinding sugar estates; these were estates which were top sugar producers, and which could have been rehabilitated with the timely and suitable capital injection, but instead, the entire GuySuCo was intentionally starved of capital inputs to justify closure.
Then, the horrific wage freeze which churned the stomachs of the sugar workers. The abandonment of the sugar workers was complete. The will to allow GuySuCo’s survival was grossly lacking. In addition, the Coalition Government saw an opportunity, given by the EU price cuts, to put Skeldon, Rose Hall, Enmore, and Wales Sugar Estates under the guillotine, thereby extracting its pound of flesh from the sugar workers whom they saw as supporters of the PPP.
This perception by the Coalition would have eventually resulted in more and more sugar workers gravitating towards that Party; their gameplan failed miserably.
In December 2018, the No Confidence Motion was the harbinger of the eventual downfall of the Coalition, and, ironically, it was voted ‘yes’ by a Coalition Member of Parliament, Mr. Charrandass Persaud from Canje, where the Rose Hall Estate is located, and which was outrageously and spitefully closed by his government in 2017.

Mr. Persaud had realised that the Coalition Government was in fact the enemy of the sugar workers, and the promise to give the workers a 20 per cent increase and the pledge never to close any sugar estate (as recommended by the costly Commission of Inquiry) was just empty rhetoric meant to deceive the masses, and to gain power-and as the game plan of the Coalition would have it-the end had justified the means.
It is important to note that in the year 1978, Rose Hall Estate was awarded the Medal of Service, and this estate had continued to perform creditably until its closure.
This was poetic justice. The Coalition government had fallen, and Rose Hall Estate has risen from the ashes, from the pyre on which the Coalition had condemned it to be burnt.

The records will show that when the Coalition assumed Office in 2015, Rose Hall Estate produced 29,768 tonnes of sugar. This was mainly due to inputs made by the PPP/C in the years before.
But, as the hands of the Coalition came into the equation, the production started to fall; in 2016 it was 20,581 tonnes, and in 2017, the year when the decision to close was made, production was 22,381 tonnes. The budgeted TC/TS was 13, and the actual TC/TS was 15 Tonnes Cane per tonnes Sugar. Was there a strong reason to close? That is the reason why the Commission of Inquiry did not recommend closure.
Moreover, the financial records would provide the evidence and testify that capital expenditure allocation dwindled and despite this, the paltry sums allocated were not fully utilised-purchase requests and purchase orders were ignored. The intention of the Coalition was laid bare in these records.
The PPP/C achieved mission impossible when they embarked on the resurrection of Rose Hall Estate. In 2020, I witnessed first-hand, the beginning of the journey to rehabilitate the Rose Hall Estate and as the Estate Manager at that time, Mr Dukhia had lamented it was ‘panoramic destruction’- everything that the eyes set upon were completely destroyed.

It was the work of monstrous proportions which could have only been carried out by utterly heartless monsters who did not only destroy the tangible fixed assets but the most important assets of all, the people.
As is the tradition and modus operandi of the PPP-they once again set out to recreate what the PNC and its cohorts destroyed. It happened from 1992 to 2015 and then again from 2020 to present.
Today, the Rose Hall Estate lives again thanks to the government, the management of GuySuCo and the management of Rose Hall Estate. More specifically, thanks to Agriculture Minister Mr Zulfikar Mustapha who never gave up-he was unrelenting in his pursuit of resolving issues as they arose and stood up to the destructive elements of the Coalition in and out of Parliament to emphasise his support for GuySuCo.
He vowed never to stop supporting GuySuCo until it becomes viable. He is not a hypocrite who claimed to have lit candles for the sugar workers and then labelled them as ‘raiders’ of the Treasury.

He did not promise the sugar workers 20 percent on the campaign trail in 2020 and then scornfully referred to the sugar industry as a ‘black hole’ but he proved to be the true champion of the sugar workers.
Today, the Rose Hall Estate has achieved its target and the workers will enjoy an extra day’s pay. Workers will earn more than $1.8 billion this year in wages and salaries. Just imagine the economic progress when the multiplier effect is considered.
There are abundant canes in the fields and the factory is producing with great efficiency, it achieved TC/TS as low as 11.7. This is a remarkable achievement given the fact that the factory was rehabilitated using mostly porters/cleaners who were trained on the job.
It is proven that that given the current mechanisation programme to convert the fields, the input of machines to bridge the labour shortage and the management structure, the factory efficiencies will be improved and sustained and Rose Hall Estate will live up to its former glory days.
The Coalition is now interested in the survival of the sugar industry and is boldly stating that baloney in Parliament, they will put measures to improve the industry but no one believes them any longer. This is an election year and no one is surprised by the multitudes of dreams that they will try to sell.
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf