Dear Editor,
It seems time for a splurge of sugary mouthings about the named national industry by all and sundry, political personalities in particular, who feel compelled to make renditions which may sound sweet to the ear. The trouble is that these ill-informed and under-informed persons have actually conveyed the impression that they believe in what they actually do not know.
Without exception there is no political official over the past decade who can take the learner through a guided tour of the sugar industry. Equally, there is no Board member who can perform such a function, and one would be pleasantly surprised at the number of executives who can do better.
Every one pretends to outpourings for public consumption, overlooking what should be obvious: that amongst the latter there is a collective of professionals much more steeped in the institutional memory of a better organised and managed sugar industry. So that rantings about greater investment carry distinctly hollow sounds which, interestingly enough, reverberate down through the field and factory labour force.
Long ago it was recognised that the most important asset of sugar was its people. That is why there was developed a sustainable Cadet Scheme to ensure the maintenance of a professional quality of management. That is why, in addition to striving for a better industrial relations climate in the face of aggressive unions, there was entrenched a human relations programme aimed at improving communication between manager and manager, and between manager and managed. That is why membership of the Board included high level technical managers who individually and severally could lead from in front, by making informed business decisions. In this case there is a marked contrast in which the current incumbents are as clueless as their collective vacuity.
So that those who talk of the future must understand that they have to come from behind the wall of informed ignorance (in its true sense) and step up to the plate of enquiry, consultation and research.
The lavish investment spoken of by all parties will be misguidedly placed if it is construed to be in just mechanical and technical projects. For these will also abort in the absence of the relevant skills and competencies, including in decision-making, throughout the organisation’s hierarchy. The institution of a vibrant human resources development programme must therefore be of the highest priority – contrary to the current state of affairs.
But there is the further distraction, if you will, to be creatively addressed, and that is how to attract to a publicly acknowledged failing industry, the calibre of human resources it so obviously needs. In a sense we have to come full circle by starting at the top, professionally that is. As a clear confidence-building measure the Board must be constituted of persons of relevantly qualified track records of managing corporate structures. The confidence-building exercise will be as much for incumbent staff as for prospective employees.
Such a Board would be bolstered from the immediate fount of knowledge from a team of the highest ranking executive managers, led by a Chief Executive Officer who must earn respect at all levels of the stakeholders.
The Human Resources Development Programme referred to earlier would include a carefully constructed succession plan, and will be well communicated in order to indicate the career opportunities available to those identified as potential for growth, through a transparent process of evaluation, deliberately eschewing the currently debilitating process of individual selection of favourites unmeritoriously.
The confidence ladder must create an environment of trust throughout the organisation and must redress the existing lacuna in communication at both vertical and lateral levels.
In the process a communication device must be developed by which regular and formal consultative arrangements between worker and manager are institutionalised. At this juncture evidence publicly exposed tends to create the impression of a number of anonymous players acting out irreconcilable postures.
There is therefore the need of a refinement which would project a specific operational profile of each estate. Talk of Skeldon is so popular, to the extent that it confuses understanding of the fundamental issues, including core management issues of which teamwork is of priority. It, at the same time, tends to obscure the legitimate problems on other locations. That is one reason individual estate profiles are necessary, not only to appreciate the contrasts, but also the compatibilities that go to make one corporate whole.
In this connection the planned rotation of estate general managers must be part of the developmental process, so that from a wider learning experience they can each contribute supportive attitudes probably not practised on the new location. The rotation process should of course apply to other levels of management, based on the carefully developed succession plan.
This means that in the same way the database will carry estate profiles, it will also include competency profiles of all managers at the central human resources office, and be accessible to the relevant executives including the Board. One implication is that the process would constrain undue political interventions as regards upward and lateral mobility.
It is not as if GuySuCo does not have the institutional memory of a highly successful training and development programme which embraced, and was embraced by, all classes, colours and creeds, in discernible contrast to the current selective process. Bigyan Chandra, a clerk, was transferred to the field and with relevant training succeeded in moving from supervisor to Field Manager to Administrative (now General) Manager, Regional Director and then full Board Director. John Bart, a proficient Welfare Officer, rose to become a Personnel Manager, performed brilliantly at the General Manager level and ended his career as Human Resources Director. Jai Bandhoo was among a number of Welfare Officers who became highly effective estate HR practitioners.
At Port Mourant there was a lively training institution that produced high class tradesmen who made it to the university level, and became not only engineers, but factory managers, even unto general managers. The Honour Roll at the Port Mourant Training Centre will testify to those graduates who rose to being (now) general managers.
It is time that this institution be reconstructed to link with the Tain Campus of UG – which should provide for further technical development. It can become the Regional Technical Training Complex of Berbice which some envisage.
In the field the Guyana School of Agriculture was the portal through which field foremen and field supervisors passed on to university and to management positions including, Chandra, General Manager.
The point is that the sugar industry was not so much about field, factory and of course vital agricultural research, it was about the people who had to deliver the products. Sugar was as much a training and education institution as it was a manufacturing enterprise.
There were years when low overseas prices forced a cutback in expenditure, particularly in the field, but the edict was out: whatever operational costs were effected, “Do not cut back on training; training is the future.”
Cane farming
While all this is being debated on it must be remembered that GuySuCo consists of a cane farming sub-sector, which is founded in legislation that is now patently ignored. As a consequence relationships tend to be haphazard and lack consistency amongst estates and related farmers.
Here again reference to cane farming and farmers have been made in wild abandon by political speakers, at least from the viewpoint of those who know better. At the particular point in time the cane farming sub-sector is as much in default as the main industry, with its low productivity.
So that talk of reconstruction, including privatisation, is at least irresponsible – from the position of cane farmers in Berbice and Demerara who are not the cohesive group for which the Cane Farming Act provides. Like the industry itself, Guyana’s farmers have not benefited from the EU compensation package, as have their counterparts in the Region. Even now they are treated contradictorily as distant partners who get minimal technical help (like mechanisation) and have to forage for high-priced financing on their own. Meanwhile they constitute one category of the industry’s indebtedness. Here is another area of education for the management team, not to mention for the politicians who should be asked where the cane farmers are located. For example when one estate gave up unyielding acres of its cultivation, and let the land out to new and untested farmers, it is not only an act of desperation but also one of deception, about which the newcomers are ill advised, if at all; which brings us back to the important value of trust and leaves the politicians with the primary responsibility to build.
But in the final analysis all the optimisms are constricted by the fact that for some time now GuySuCo has been bereft of an incumbent with adequate sapiential authority to drive the human resource management and development train – since the departure of once Cadet Nowrang Persaud, as HR Director several years ago. Any attempt at an internal posting to this vacant position will be more risk than advantage. At this juncture it is necessary to bite the bold and creative bit of advertising for a Human Resources Director throughout the diaspora.
Hopefully the case is made for priority to be given to the humanisation over the mechanisation of GuySuCo.
Yours faithfully,
E B John