Dear Editor,
I am a retired and former member of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) Belvedere/ Hampshire Branch, without any faded conviction to the party, and wish to make reference to a letter from the Chairman of the WPA Ali Majeed which appeared in SN on March 16, captioned ‘GuySuCo has been treated like a party institution.’ Bro Majeed pointed out that the former head of government, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, in a recent press conference (as a matter of fact it’s the only press conference he hosted since demitting office as President) “revealed inside knowledge of the alleged reason for the irregular, unlawful and fictional arrangement” between the Central Housing & Planning Authority and the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission for a $3 billion loan to CH&PA. The head of state further stated that the $3 billion from the CH&PA was passed on to GuySuCo for lands that the sugar company sold to CH&PA for the acceleration of the housing drive. Before this revelation, there was no mention from anyone that this huge sum of money went to GuySuCo, and whether the transaction was legitimate or not. The fact of the matter was that the “fictional arrangement” was to provide cash to the financially beleaguered sugar company, whose coffers have run dry. For how long and how often will this go on whereby “fictional arrangements” of the like of CH&PA-GGMC will be concocted to provide cash to the sugar company to take care of its operational expenses?
GuySuCo has not only been treated like a party institution, it is still being treated like a party institution. When the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GuySuCo can often be seen accompanying the President, and even seen disembarking from the presidential car on many of the President’s visits to Berbice, what sort of treatment do you expect for the sugar company from the government? It’s obvious that there will be less effort to ensure that the sugar company is managed in a manner that it is self sufficient to fund its operational expenses, when a close relationship with the government allows for working out some arrangement and for making sure money is available to finance the day-to-day running of the business.
Editor, almost everyone, everywhere, shares some kind of political ideology or has an inherent allegiance to a political organization, but where the management of a business is concerned, private or public, such shared ideology or allegiance must be kept separate and distinct from the affairs of the business, lest the business becomes an unfortunate victim of such an undesirable affair, and unfairly gets branded as being politically aligned. GuySuCo unfortunately is already consumed in such an affair, since as Bro Majeed rightly said “GuySuCo is being treated like a party institution.”
Yours faithfully,
Wazir Khan
