At the commissioning of the Enmore sugar-packaging plant recently, GuySuCo Director, Mr. Donald Ramotar, lauded GuySuCo’s employees for their exceptional work ethic and immeasurable skills, which make them exemplary employees, many of whom have moved on to serve in various other organisations as engineers and in the other professions.
This is so mainly because GuySuCo workers emerge out of a work environment that prepares them with highly marketable skills.  The estates have been run, not only by the Board of Directors and management, but by every employee in the various estates, because at every level of sugar production that finally eventuates in the golden or honey brown sugar pouring through the national fiscal dynamics demands skills peculiar to specific areas of cultivation, harvesting, and production.   Then there are the ancillary areas, such as maintenance.
Sugar production in Guyana dates back to in excess of three centuries ago, and the sugar factories inherited by present-day Guyanese would have collapsed long ago, except that sugar estate employees are highly skilled, highly innovative, and can configure ways to stretch materials, money, and convert resources to breathe new life into near-extinct machinery parts that create patches upon patches, until the original patches have been replaced so many times that they are no longer visible; but they work perfectly.  So, too, field and production workers have honed the processes of sugar cultivation and production into a fine art.
Sugar workers have traditionally been loyal to their estates and would go that extra mile for the estate and each other in order to synchronise effective work programmes and schedules in efforts to maximize production and reach targets, and they have always performed creditably.  Perhaps there is no category of employees in Guyana that works harder than GuySuCo workers, especially those who work in the fields and the production systems.
The sugar industry has historically bolstered the economy of this nation and has also been instrumental in supporting other industries – either directly or indirectly- especially through the sugar levy.  However, since the EU price cuts, with all its implications – which have been vented ad nauseum- the industry and consequently the workers and their families have faced hard times as the Government grapples with the harsh realities of huge losses from several contributory factors; yet,with the knowledge that the sector had to be sustained, because there was no other option if thousands of families who depend on sugar for their survival – either directly or indirectly, for their sustenance, were not to face starvation and absolute penury.
The government’s turnaround plan for the sugar industry has faced many hurdles, especially during this teething phase, and the self-proclaimed magicians who can conjure up miraculous solutions, albeit rhetorically, have only added to the confusion and the angst of the sugar workers, who have faced some unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances and situations in their peculiar working environments during the past several years.
However, with the concerted efforts of all the stakeholders – Board, management, and the workers- GuySuCo is slowly but steadily “getting there”, as Chairman Dr. Nanda Gopaul put it.
Government has consistently kept faith with sugar workers, even while it shouldered the burden of transforming the sector into viability once more, and the latest package of $300M in severance pay for the Diamond sugar workers is proof that, while solutions may not be immediately forthcoming,  the needs and rights of workers – in every sector in the country- will always be addressed by the PPP/C administration, because the government has time and again demonstrated that it would not lay waste  its most valuable resource – its human resource base- for that way  lies national socio-economic devastation, which they inherited in 1992; and they would never countenance reversing their development path by sacrificing the workforce of the nation.      `
However, keeping faith needs to be reciprocal, if the country is to progress and optimum benefits harvested from the nation’s potential for prosperity.  Everyone needs to do their part if this country is to advance on its current developmental path.