Dear Editor,
The PPP/C seems hell bent on blaming the opposition for their failures and their incompetence in managing our country; the failure of the sugar industry is also being blamed on the opposition, which is something only a fool will believe. Tony Vieira who is very knowledgeable in that area recently pointed to some facts that would inevitably lead to the closure of the industry.
The government knows that they don’t have the vision to revive the industry and instead of looking for means to create jobs for the thousands of workers who would be jobless, they continue with their bullying ways.
From all indications, this government knows that the sugar industry will collapse and senior management in the industry also must know. At Uitvlugt estate, a trailer with workers coming from the canefield overturned just before the compound, injuring a few shortly before the Christmas season last year. The reason for the accident was an extremely large hole on the main access dam to the estate that vehicles can’t avoid. We had a good spell of dry season so that the hole could have been patched, but when this present crop started and vehicles with workers couldn’t traverse there, then they decided to patch it. At Leonora, there’s a dam in dire need of repair and some genius obtained builders’ waste to throw in the holes. Amongst the debris that was collected, was a concrete slab with steel protruding through it that could do severe damage to any type of tyre. Lots of dams in the estate have stones on them that help to make them stronger, and instead of filling the holes up they are grading the dams and pushing the stuff to the edge, as a result of which many of the dams have no stones on them now, just mud. If the rain falls, these dams cannot be used. At present, if we were to get heavy rainfall, owing to the condition of the dams, the sugar workers would have to be taken to the work sites by punt (the punts being pulled by bulls), and that will take a long time and some workers refuse to travel that way.
Finally Editor, I have written about the conditions of the punts at the Uitvlugt Estate and at present, the factory is worse off, because they are grinding canes two to three times a week because the factory doesn’t have enough punts for the canes to be loaded into. Presently they have fewer than three hundred punts, so they have to wait for those to load and then after emptying at the factory they return to the canefield to reload, whilst the canecutters cut the canes and leave them there is the sun, affecting the purity of the canes.
If the punts were being properly maintained and all the punts they have lying about all over the estate were in working order, a waste of money could have been avoided.
Yours faithfully,
Sahadeo Bates
