The announcement of the closure of Wales estate struck like an earthquake. It was a little like living on the San Andreas fault; everyone knows that one day – hopefully in the mists beyond a far horizon − the big one is going to come; the problem is that no one knows exactly when. And so it was with Wales. The chatter had been circulating for some years in international financial circles about the closure of the West Bank estates; in fact the World Bank recommended this course to the government. However, a PPP administration was not prepared at the time to face down its own constituency in Region 3 in the interest of economic imperatives, although two East Demerara estates were in fact closed. And even the new coalition government’s Commission of Inquiry into the sugar industry did not recommend the closure of any estates, hence the shock at the news about Wales when it came.
What the Ministry of Agriculture has called the “parlous state of the sugar industry” is not in any doubt. Neither, one presumes, is its assessment of Wales, 60% of whose infrastructure, it said, is “run down”; 75% of whose bridges are “in poor shape”; whose cultivation is in poor condition; and whose factory is “old and in need of major investment.” It went on to give the financial projections for Wales this year, which would amount to a loss of $1.6-$1.9 billion, and which coupled with essential refurbishment would “render it prohibitively costly to maintain.”
Never mind the economic realities, former president Jagdeo went into immediate overdrive, calling on the government to reverse the decision. “Sugar can still be made viable,” he was quoted as saying; “I’m convinced that sugar would get back on its feet.” He blamed the state of the industry on the loss of $8 billion in revenue as a consequence of the reduction in the European market price. That, of course, is only a partial truth. More pertinent is the fact that his government badly mismanaged the sugar industry, and most of all, that his own pet project, to wit, the Skeldon sugar factory (the largest white elephant in this country’s history) drained GuySuCo’s resources. As a consequence of this colossal misjudgement, all the other estates were made to suffer and deprived of desperately needed funds.
Furthermore, like all politicians, Mr Jagdeo has a very short-term memory, and forgets his government’s poor handling of the closure of LBI and Diamond. One can only wonder idly what a PPP government would have done had they won the May election last year. Certainly, his two current solutions for saving the sugar industry are hardly “viable” – one of them, in fact, makes no sense at all. In any case, Mr Jagdeo is simply being hypocritical if he claims that a government comprising the party of which he is now leader would have been able to avoid some very hard decisions where the sugar industry is concerned; this is a challenge which is not amenable to either easy or painless solutions.
Where the Leader of the Opposition was right was in castigating the government for the way in which the news of the closure was made public. No senior manager, let alone a senior politician, spoke to the workers to explain the circumstances and what the shape of the future might be, let alone what arrangements were in train to provide alternative livelihoods for those who would not be accommodated at Uitvlugt. No, the news fluttered down onto the public ‒ never mind the workers ‒ in the form of a press release from the Ministry of Agriculture. For a government which has set such store on inclusiveness, this was an unbelievably casual way to proceed on an announcement of such moment. It was as if they hoped the news would just slip by without too much comment. If they did, then they must be more alienated from the political realities of this country than anyone could have thought possible.
Seemingly taken unaware by the virulence of the reaction to the news, Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder then appeared at a post-Cabinet media briefing presumably with the aim of damage control. There were measures in the pipeline, he told the media, to cushion the effects of the Wales closure, although he was thin on the details of exactly what these were. And that, of course, is the gravamen of the problem. And full-page ads in the national press on the “facts” relating to Wales estate did not help matters, since they dealt with why the estate had to be closed, not what alternatives were to be made available to those who would not be absorbed by Uitvlugt. “[Do] not… be duped by lies, misinformation and propaganda,” the government told “the sugar workers, their families and the nation” in the advertisement. What is the administration thinking? That if the workers accept the economic reality they will go on the breadline quietly without demanding real information about their future?
Wales employs 1600 to 1700 workers directly, but in addition to the private cane farmers, there is a large number of people who are indirectly dependent on the estate. Between Sisters and Patentia there is a substantial population, whose members, if they are not engaged in estate work of one kind or another, run a range of shops and services, or have market stalls where they sell their kitchen garden produce on a Friday. When the estate is grinding it attracts any number of vendors to the area. In other words, Wales is the fulcrum of a thriving community, and as such, the closure of the estate will have an economic ripple effect. It is not as if, either, there is much in the way of alternative employment on the West Bank.
Even the question of how the private cane farmers will get their cane to Uitvlugt without incurring intolerable additional costs is still being worked out; furthermore, no one knows at this stage how many workers Uitvlugt can absorb, although it has been said that the factory there has a lot of vacancies. And as for the other workers, while there is some vague notion about utilizing the estate lands for diversification, none of that has been decided on finally either.
One cannot avoid the feeling that the government promulgated a decision that was inevitable, but did it prematurely. The Guyana Times had published rumours about the closure before the official announcement, but the government should not have allowed the newspaper to affect their timing. It may be, conversely, that they wanted to make the closure public before the budget, but whatever the reason for declaring it when they did, they cannot be excused for not presenting to the affected workers a far more developed plan for their future. Since they were clearly not ready with that now, then they should have waited until they were.
Sugar carried this nation’s economy for nearly three hundred years, and in a sense for much of that period it defined us. Even now it is still a major foreign-exchange earner and employs more people than any other operation in the country. One cannot cast off a whole segment of its workforce without affecting a large number of other people and destroying the heart of an entire community. What has to be done, has to be done, but not without some kind of safety net in place first. The government had better get to work fast on the safety net, and start communicating with the workers – and the private cane farmers – on an ongoing basis about the trend of its thinking, and getting inputs from them about the direction which could be taken so they will be able to provide for themselves and their families.
