I refer to the letter entitled `The reporter should have checked with the MMA’ written by Rudolph Gajraj, Chairman of the MMA-ADA which appeared in the Guyana Chronicle dated 22 March 2010.
In his letter Mr Gajraj accused Stabroek News of peddling half truths when the issue of rotting land planes (similar to the ones recently acquired again in 2009) was brought up some time ago. Mr Ajar mentioned that the said land planes were sold to Guysuco some years ago.
The facts are as follows, the MMA-ADA invested huge sums of money (tens of millions of dollars) to acquire laser levelling equipment including approximately 10 automatic hydrau-lic scraper boxes, laser emitters, laser receivers and all the works. This equipment was bought sometime in the early 90’s to assist farmers with land levelling to ensure consistent water depth in fields.
In 2006 (10+ years after) Guysuco placed a tender for the purchase of similar equipment to assist with land grading at Skeldon on the SSMP (Skeldon Sugar Modernization Project). In order to reduce the expenditure Guysuco decided to lower the quantities required and buy the unused equipment from MMA-ADA. I was present during the inspection of this equipment and can safely say that their state can be categorised as extremely poor.
It should be noted that the equipment appeared hardly used from the unworn tyre treads, clean (not oily hydraulic hoses), unworn blades etc. They were stored in the open so although the equipment was unused they were badly rotted, the tyres were suffering from dry rot and the hydraulic systems were seized up. Additionally, the laser emitters, receivers and cables that were stored in a room suffered from rat bites.
Due to the politics involved (transferring money from Guysuco to the MMA) the SSMP managers were instructed to buy the equipment and rehabilitate same. I can safely say that out of the six boxes bought none were operable. After considerable efforts and expense by the workshop team two of the boxes were repaired by scavenging parts from others, lots of welding and fitting with new tyres and new hoses.
Therefore I can verify that the land planes that Guysuco bought from the MMA were rotten. Additionally none of the emitters/receivers were ever repaired.
Finally I have some questions for Mr Gajraj, can you provide details i.e. names of farmers and acreage levelled using the equipment that was sold to Guysuco? I am sure you will find that the equipment was underutilized. This begs another question, why purchase another set as was done in 2009? With the recent dry spell, lots of land should have been levelled, please provide us with detailed figures. I am sure you will find that the tractors used are too small for this job and nothing significant was done. We all know that farmers do not have the time and money to level fields. To achieve consistent depths of water, farmers have been using back blades and building small dams to divide large fields so as to achieve a consistent depth of water in the smaller fields formed. Another reason for using this approach is that land levelling – moving fertile topsoil from one end of a field and dumping same on the topsoils at the other end – exposes the infertile subsoil from the part of the field being “excavated” and as a result yields decrease. To avoid this, topsoil would have to be removed from the entire field and stored. The subsoil would have to be levelled then the stored topsoil replaced. This takes lots of time and costs lots of money (fuel) so it will not work.
The land levelling plans at SSMP, Skeldon is proof of this as you will all know this activity has been shelved as it takes too much time and money. SSMP has gone back to the bed system and now calls it “broad beds”. We will have to wait and see how the mechanised harvesters perform on this system.
Yours faithfully,
Raymond Persaud
