-slams opposition leader over GUYSUCO remarks

MINISTER of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, has fiercely rejected recent statements by Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton, calling his promises about the future of the sugar industry disingenuous and a blatant attempt to rewrite history at the expense of thousands of sugar workers who suffered under the previous APNU+AFC Government.
In a strongly worded statement, Mustapha reminded the nation that it was the APNU+AFC coalition, now led by Norton, that closed the Rose Hall, Skeldon, Wales, and Enmore sugar estates, throwing over 7,500 sugar workers out of jobs and plunging entire communities into a social and economic crisis between 2015 and 2020.

He pointed out that the closures happened despite a Commission of Inquiry, commissioned by the Coalition itself, which strongly advised against shutting down the estates, warning of severe long-term social and economic consequences.

Instead, the closures left families struggling, with a United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) study later documenting rising levels of suicide, crime, and alcohol abuse in affected communities.

To make matters worse, Mustapha said, the same administration refused to pay displaced sugar workers their full severance, forcing workers into lengthy court battles just to receive what they were owed. It was only under the PPP/C Government, he noted, that sugar workers received their full severance, after sustained legal action and public pressure.
“Now Mr. Norton stands before the nation pretending to care about the very industry they dismantled — promising no closures and vague dreams of modernisation. These are nothing more than theatrical fabrications, hollow promises built on the ruins they themselves created,” Mustapha stated.

The Agriculture Minister highlighted that it is under the current PPP/C administration and the leadership of President Dr. Irfaan Ali that GUYSUCO is being rebuilt, not abandoned.
He pointed to the reopening of the Rose Hall Estate, the re-employment of workers, and ongoing investments in mechanisation, recapitalisation, and diversification to restore the industry’s profitability and relevance.

“These are not promises on paper; they are real initiatives delivering real results,” Mustapha said, adding that the sugar industry needs leadership, not empty rhetoric.
He said the sugar workers of Guyana are not naive and will remember exactly who stood with them during their hardest times and who turned their backs on them.
“They remember who shut down the estates and who re-opened them. They remember who fought for their severance and who withheld it,” Mustapha declared.

He reaffirmed that under the PPP/C Government, the sugar industry will continue on a path of revival and modernisation, with real action, not false promises.