Dear Editor,
I make reference to a letter by Mr Tony Vieira captioned ‘A little more time is needed to disclose a plan for the sugar industry’ that was carried in your January 27 edition. I am delighted to learn from the missive that Mr Vieira and his fellow directors of GuySuCo board are working on a plan that will “make the combination of sugar cane and other crops an economic success for GuySuCo so that the workers will not be displaced”.
Editor, those sugar workers who are still on the job and would have worked in the late 1980s will shudder with fear and apprehension on hearing the term “other crops”. The misfortunes of the company at the time was attributed to an ill-conceived plan for “other crops”. One hopes that Mr Vieira and his team get it right this time, because if they don’t it will be the end of the sugar industry.
Mr Vieira left sugar many years ago, and may not understand that sugar workers are not what they were in the 1980s and 1990s. They now think and act for themselves as independents do, and not even the unions and politicians have command over them. It’s the other way round. So, I would suggest to Mr Vieira that whatever plans he and his team develop, they will be a no go unless they are accepted by the workers.
Workers at Wales, whose fate on their estate’s closure is seemingly sealed, will certainly be left distressed when they read that “there is a promise that by October we may be able to offer a plan which will make the loss of the Wales estate just a memory of a bad time”. Why wasn’t there a definite plan when the decision to close was communicated, which would have assuaged the workers’ concern that there is a way of life ahead for them, rather than saying that “we may be able to offer a plan”? It means therefore that despite deciding to close the estate, no thought was given on the future of the workers.
Mr Vieira stated that “in 1992 the sugar industry had 24,000 employees and without paying a cent in compensation it dwindled to 18,000 by 2000, but in the same period the wage bill rose from 4.6 billion dollars in 1992 to over 12 billion in 2000”. In 1992, the minimum wage was $237.80 and in 2000 it was $712.28, an increase of 300% over the period. In aggregate, Booker Tate awarded a 95% increase in wages between 1992 to 1995, an average of 24% each year. The compounded rate of inflation for the period 1992-2000 was 88%, so was Mr Vieira expecting that the minimum wage of $237.80 should subsist to 2000 despite an 88% diminution in workers’ purchasing power?
In the same period, sugar production moved from 246,898 tonnes sugar in 1992 to an average of 272,392 tonnes for the period 1993 to 2000, an increase of approximately 25,500 tonnes per year, despite the workforce ‘dwindling” from 24,000 to 18,000. Isn’t this better management of an optimum workforce?
On his own estate, Houston, Mr. Vieira stated that “the workforce died on us”, since the estate used to load 40 punts per day, but by 2006 we were loading 3 punts a day”. There are a range of factors that may have contributed to Houston’s dwindling workforce from cultivation, to wage rates, to worker-management relations, to cane yield, so without any input from Mr Vieira as to why the workers withdrew from their estate, it is difficult to offer a comment. However, Mr Vieira may wish to comment on the state of the estate in 2006 when “the workforce died” on them compared to the era of 1960-1975 when the average annual sugar production was 4,896 tonnes sugar, tonnes cane per hectare 82.49 and TC/TS of 10.71; the workforce was alive and kicking then.
Editor, the sugar industry is in a parlous state as never before; as such there should be no room for vitriol and arrogance. It needs all hands on board, and not handed-down boardroom decisions.
Yours faithfully,
Rajendra Parmanand
