Dear Editor,
The newspapers on Thursday all reported on the opening of the new bottling plant at DDL. This expansion seems to be a Guyana success story that all Guyanese should be proud about, according to the speakers at the plant opening.
Capitalism is like that. Regardless of whether the bottles are going to be full of water or rum, the statements about competitiveness, market access for products, innovation, financing, etc etc did not really say much about the products.
But rum is not a product like any other. Rum has taken its toll on Guyanese lives and lives abroad.
The EU Ambassador spoke to ‘lovers of rum’. The Ambassador must know of the havoc wreaked in Guyana by lovers of rum, some not far from the new DDL bottling plant.
Two million euros of EU money would go a long way towards supporting the NGOs and Government agencies who have to struggle with the problems caused by alcohol consumption in Guyana. The EU countries themselves are battling with some of those problems (http://ec.europa.eu/health-eu/my_lifestyle/alcohol/index_en.htm).
A community activist in Sophia has been trying to get some of those posters from the campaign to stop underage drinking and was told that the campaign has finished. I wonder if the EU would help those community people to easily access funds to print some more of the posters to put up on the legal and illegal rum shops in Guyana which vend the produce of the new efficient bottling plant.
The report in the Chronicle talks about ‘increased local demand’. That is frightening, that there is going to be increased consumption when the Minister of Health has already expressed concerns about the levels of alcohol consumption in Guyana.
Another headline in Stabroek News “‘Alcohol in me head had me real bad’ tells the other side of the grim story of the successes of the alcohol industry. There are other stories in the newspapers and not in the newspapers.
Kaieteur News reports that President Jagdeo asked for a large photograph of a rum bottle to be removed from the podium. There are no explanations given. I would like to fantasize that soon after coming from Divali celebrations where he spoke out against alcohol abuse, he might have recognised the dilemma of promoting a product which has damaged the lives of many of his constituents and that this was the only statement he could make about alcohol consumption.
He might have had in his head the concerns of the Minister of Health, the Minister of Human Services, the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport and even recently the Minister of Agriculture who at the Guysuco Awards ceremony in Blairmont talked about the problems of alcohol consumption in the sugar industry.
This Guyanese is not proud of the DDL technological innovation. DDL would do better for their shareholders, Guyana and the world if they could use that money and apply those successful business principles which were lauded to diversify from a product which has destroyed so many lives. The alcohol industry in Guyana operates in a bubble that other people are responsible for the controls on alcohol, and that they have to do what they have to do in the interest of maximizing profits. We know that our humanity cannot be sustained if some of us profit while others suffer.
Yours faithfully,
Vidyaratha Kissoon
