–President Ali affirms necessary changes will be made at GUYSUCO management
–Says Gov’t ready to deploy technical expertise

PRESIDENT Dr Irfaan Ali has signalled that his government will press ahead with “necessary” changes at the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), vowing that investments in the industry must yield concrete results.
Addressing hundreds gathered at Enmore on Tuesday for the commemoration of the Enmore Martyrs, the President said he has already “read the riot act” to GuySuCo’s leadership over the corporation’s failure to consistently meet production targets.
“I’m not pleased with the failure of the corporation to consistently achieve the production target. I’ve made this position abundantly clear. I’ve read the riot act to the management. I’ve demanded greater accountability. I’ve demanded greater efficiency. I’ve demanded better results, “he said.
He stressed that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration is prepared to bring in technical expertise and redesign operations at the estates to ensure that investments begin to pay off for workers, communities and the wider economy.

“Let me also say this clearly, the responsibility for reviving the sugar industry does not rest with management alone; it rests with all of us, because sugar not only supports sugar workers, but sugar also supports the entire community, the markets, the stores. It supports an entire ecosystem,” he added.
TECHNICAL EXPERTISE AND NEW MODELS FOR ESTATES
President Ali made it clear that the government will not shy away from restructuring where needed, including at Skeldon, and is prepared to back a comprehensive programme of retraining and redeployment for sugar workers.
“We are also looking at opportunities to lift the workers from one level to the next level. If we have to deploy a system of support through public policy to lift the workers from one level to the next level with a direct conversation with the worker, with retraining and retooling, reorganising, repositioning, strategising, reorienting …you can rest assured the People’s Progressive Party will do it,” he said.
‘SUGAR WOULD BE DEAD TODAY’ WITHOUT GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
While critical of the corporation’s performance, President Ali defended the scale of budgetary transfers to GuySuCo, arguing that without them the industry and the villages it sustains would have collapsed.
“Without the investments we have made and the sacrifices we have made, sugar would be dead today… When some people advocate closing the sugar industry, they’re effectively advocating economic devastation for a large section of rural Guyana. No responsible government can ignore that reality, and that is why we’ll continue to support the industry,” he stressed.
Budget 2026, some $13.4 billion was allocated to GuySuCo for modernisation, mechanisation, factory upgrades and expanded value-added production
Recently, the government tabled a supplementary budget providing an additional $3 billion for the corporation, taking total budgetary support for 2026 to $16.4 billion.
He lambasted previous administrations of hypocrisy for portraying the support to sugar as “wasting money”, recalling that under the former APNU+AFC administration, estates were closed and thousands of workers placed on the breadline.
The President insisted that the PPP/C’s policy is to keep sugar alive while transitioning it to a modern, cost-effective footing.
MODERN TECHNOLOGY
President Ali also outlined a modernisation agenda for sugar, built on mechanisation, drones and greater value-added production.
He revealed that approximately 44 per cent of Guysuco’s lands have already been converted for mechanical harvesting, and argued that this shift is unavoidable given labour shortages and changing attitudes among workers’ children.

“We know there’s an acute shortage of labour. We know that many sugar workers do not want their children to engage in the task of cane cutting. That is why mechanisation is no longer optional. It is necessary,”
The President said drone technology is now being deployed for crop surveillance and the application of chemicals and fertilisers, replacing older, more cumbersome systems:
“We don’t need to buy 100 vehicles to go in the fields, Land Rovers with managers standing at the back. We can deploy a drone and, in real time, we can see the entire cultivation in less than 10% of the time it took historically,” Dr Ali said.
He added that government and GuySuCo are modernising factories, pursuing value-added sugar production and seeking “variations of formulas” to cut costs while opening new areas for growth on sugar land.
“The modernisation of the sugar industry is necessary for its survival, resilience and sustainability,” Ali declared.
ENMORE MARTYRS: STRUGGLE AND SACRIFICE
He recalled that the killing of five sugar workers on 16 June 1948 was a turning point in the anti colonial movement and helped set Guyana on the road to independence.
He framed sugar not merely as an economic sector, but as a “heritage industry” and a “hotbed of struggle” that produced rights and protections now taken for granted:
“The sugar industry was never a passive industry… It was a breeding ground of organisation. It was a nursery of resistance… Many of the rights and protections that workers enjoy today were not handed out as gifts. They were won through struggle.”
The five sugar workers, namely Rambarran, Lall called ‘Pooran’, Lallabagie Kissoon, Surujballi called ‘Dookie’ and Harry, lost their lives while on strike at Plantation Enmore, East Coast Demerara.