Dear Editor,
History recounts that sugar was being produced in what is now Guyana, as far back as the 17th century, when the Dutch were involved in both Essequibo and Berbice.
In 1746, sugar plantations began to be established in Demerara as well. There may have been around 400 estates early in the nineteenth century, but then followed a progressive reduction to 238 by 1829; 138 by 1890; 80 by 1900; 39 by 1922; 18 by 1967; 11 by 1976 – the year of nationalisation; then 10 in 1978.
Factory operations also reduced with these being proportionately centralized, from 62 sugar factories in 1897 to 21 in 1928, and 10 in 1978 – almost identical with the concentration of the cultivations.
By the end of 2010, the disposition of grinding estates was as follows:
In Berbice – Skeldon Estate; Albion/Port Mourant (the latter half of the name memoralises the Port Mourant Estate which was closed in 1955); Rose Hall – all east of the Berbice River: and Blairmont Estate on the western bank of that river.
On the East Coast of Demerara and immediately facing the Atlantic Ocean is Enmore Estate; La Bonne Intention (LBI)/Ogle Estate which also produces sugar from the canefields of the former Diamond Estate (whose factory was closed in 1987). The LBI/Ogle factory has since been closed, and all production concentrated at Enmore under the banner of East Demerara Estates.
On the West Bank of the Demerara River is situated Wales Estate; while along the West Coast of Demerara, and confronting the Atlantic Ocean is Uitvlugt Estate, which produces sugar from canes grown at the neighbouring cultivation of Leonora, whose factory was closed in 1986.
Just recently followed the partial attempt to integrate LBI and Enmore Estates into what has since been called East Demerara Estate. But as it happened, only the smoke of the LBI factory was snuffed out, while the mirror still reflects duplications of cultivation, field workshop, field laboratory, mill dock, medical services, stores, and more, between the two locations.
Too few local observers quite appreciate that the sugar industry, reliant as it is on overseas markets for its revenue, is more an international than a local business, that is constrained by intensive union activity (more perhaps than that of the workers themselves) to an increasing extent.
The leadership not only feels they can dictate to the employers, but have in fact been propelled by non-industrial influences to do so. It is in the face of this progressive invasiveness that the management’s authority and self-confidence tended to crumble – to a point of least resistance. So that the latter at every level of the hierarchical structure acquiesced to demands which proved financially disastrous for the sustainability of the business of sugar.
The consequence was that a benign administration, mindful of its demographic support along the sugar coastland, contributed substantively to the non-viability of the business by splurging annual amounts of largesse from the public purse, while coincidentally, indeed deliberately, refusing to transmit any of the well documented EU reparations (for the loss of the guaranteed sugar market, declared well in advance) specified for the sugar industry as a whole, and of course including small cane farmers, whose counterparts in the Caribbean enjoyed proportionate benefits. In the local case, apart from vain declamations in the media, there was a deafening silence heard from routinely boisterous unionists, much more from the concerned and vocal members of the society at large.
Curiously also, was the resigned acceptance of the continuous years of persistently poor production and productivity, admittedly occasioned by low worker attendance; but more often loudly blamed on the weather by a management cadre which dared not admit to the emasculation of their authority and control which resulted in their overall ineffectualness.
The explicit result to be observed included poor yields in estate cultivations and the sub-average performance of factories.
One defence some braver managers could raise (at the risk of summary dismissals for unjustified reasons) was there was minimal funding, so that urgently required programmes of maintenance and repairs could not be effected on a timely basis. One reason was that the organisation’s creditworthiness had been so eroded that reputable (overseas) suppliers, for one, were no longer accessible for providing badly needed replacements in field and factory equipment. The situation was exacerbated by resort to a system of procurement that involved new and inexperienced local suppliers who, not surprisingly, were unacquainted with the standards of quality of equipment and spares most appropriate to GuySuCo’s critical needs. The records are replete with such compromised, yet costly transactions at this level.
All the above contributed to a situation that continued to be in dire need of retrieval; but perhaps too late. One egregious example both the yea-sayers and nay-sayers agree on, has been the albatross, over the last decade, of the Chinese puzzle better known as the ‘Skeldon Factory’ – an engineering feat which never got off the ground, constructed as it was of commingled technologies sourced from varying suppliers – the totality of which never looked (and never will) add up to the vaunted processing target of 350 tonnes cane per hour.
That the Skeldon factory did better in the second crop of 2015, than in previous seasons, was essentially a measure of the very sub-standard performance of those years when, even in desperation, one head of state publicly declared that he would apply his own considerable manipulative skills to energizing the lethargy surrounding the most ‘modern’ technological development in the sugar industry in the 21st century.
Its capacity for absorbing foreign advice was insatiable, as it was for the continuous financial inputs dumped into its suspect viability – arguably depleting funding for more productive entities in Berbice and Demerara, and indeed even weaker ones, like Wales Estate, for example.
Caught in this maelstrom of crass decision-making and the consequent stream of obfuscations and misrepresentations of the extant situation, the eyes and ears of normally alert stakeholders became befogged.
So that while it might have appeared a sudden and abrupt decision, the restructuring of Wales, not its closure, was an inevitability – starved as it had been of the resources, financial and material, it so badly needed (as obtained with counterpart locations). Indeed the World Bank had indicated this a few years ago.
What is important to note is that the sugar industry has had a history of reconstruction. We are living in one of these periods when sugar prices are not only too low, and the cost of production too high, but in the larger nutritional world, sugar is becoming an increasingly less recommended diet. Hence diversification must be!
But in all of this the role of the unions cannot be trivialised. Rather than displaying concern about the failing health of the industry; showing leadership that would move (with their followership) towards the mitigation of falling production and productivity, they literally found that ‘obstacles’ in the field proved to be financially rewarding, and, more often than not, frightened a management lacking confidence into agreeing that the latter had in fact placed so many ‘obstacles’ in the path of the workers, that they did not need to go into the field to be paid.
The records would reveal the inordinate sums paid to clear ‘obstacles’ away from strikes. Even so, such rewards were minuscule when compared to the insensitive insistence of annual wage increases, regardless of the business’ ability to pay, as well as the blatant indulgence in rewarding the non-achievement of annual targets – conditions not one of the nay-sayers would allow in their respective businesses.
So should they too not be recognised as contributors ‒ after the fact ‒ of a truly Guyanese dilemma, one which could better be healed through the forging of genuine partnerships, rather than abstaining, and allowing the stain on our economy and society to spread?
Business institutions in the more industrialised world are setting up such models of ‘partnerships’ which we must emulate, rather than commit to the outdated adversarial roles in which we have so long been embedded. Therein lies the future. In this regard the book titled Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux, published by Nelson Parker in Brussels, Belgium, is a highly recommended read for all concerned.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
