An indispensable facet of good governance is the considerate presentation of important decisions and ensuring that there is transparency coupled with the willingness to provide explanations if challenged. Governments must make certain that the people most affected by these decisions are kept involved and attuned to the outcomes. It is one of a number of areas where the APNU+AFC government and its designates in various agencies have been found severely lacking. It is a failure that festers and builds deep-seated resentment.
A prime example of this is the government’s handling -along with its hand-picked GuySuCo management and board – of the sugar industry. Relations between the government and the workers were already frayed because of the reality that the sugar industry is solidly the constituency of the former PPP/C government and that in recent years it had to be bailed out with billions of taxpayers’ money and with billions more to come. The thousands of sugar workers were left on tenterhooks last year after the government set up a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the sugar industry amid anxieties that some estates would be closed and privatisation pursued.
There were months of conflicting signals and silence from the CoI and government until the hammer blow fell in January this year, to wit that cane would cease to be planted at the Wales Estate at the end of this year. That decision went against the grain of the recommendations in the CoI and was not properly communicated to workers and the community of Wales. Understandably, there was much dismay and despondency among Wales workers that their decades-old livelihood was coming to a bleak end and that they faced a very uncertain future. Some settled for severance – payment of which has now been ensnared by a court case – while hundreds of others await their fate. In the intervening months, neither the government/Ministry of Agriculture nor GuySuCo was able to alleviate the mental burden on workers or to keep their unions properly advised. There was some talk about feasibility studies – aquaculture was mentioned – which would inform decisions on the way forward but nothing tangible and neither GuySuCo nor the Ministry of Agriculture has taken the public into their confidence in relation to these studies.
It therefore came as a monumental surprise that the public would learn of the next significant development by way of an advertisement on Thursday by GuySuCo in the state-owned Guyana Chronicle inviting bids for the clearing of 485 acres of Wales estate for the cultivation of rice. This was a most disrespectful and outrageous display by GuySuCo and the government. Why wasn’t there some engagement with the workers and other stakeholders on the prospect of rice becoming one of the diversification trajectories for Wales?
Is it the intention of the powers that be that the workers who along with their families have served the sugar industry faithfully for decades will simply be instructed on the way forward without even the prospect of the most glancing of consultations? Is it the case that GuySuCo and the government expect that the workers could be miraculously transformed from cane planters and tenderers to rice growers and harvesters? Is it the case that GuySuCo has done rigorous due diligence on the Wales soils to assure it that cultivation of rice is feasible and that the drainage and irrigation infrastructure is suitable? Is it the case that rice is the only feasible diversification option and if not is it wise to commit any part of Wales to rice if other viable options exist? Is it the case that a full market feasibility study has been done for the rice that is going to be grown at Wales?
Whatever the answers, the springing of this project on the sugar workers and general public by way of an advertisement in the state-owned newspaper is to be rejected in the strongest terms. GuySuCo is behaving like an overseer rather than a corporation that should be acutely aware of its corporate social responsibility. Considering that no senior government official had the good sense to visit Wales in January to explain the closure of sugar cultivation to workers and the community, both the administration and the sugar corporation must now do the honourable thing and lay out in detail why rice cultivation is feasible, how it will be done and how the present workers of the estate and residents of Wales will be involved. Workers should also be fully apprised of other diversification ventures that may be in the pipeline.
The callous treatment of the sugar workers by the APNU+AFC government has not been singular. Traits of this high-handed behaviour has been seen in the APNU+AFC controlled City Hall particularly in relation to the vendors. It has also been seen in the manner in which army personnel descended on the Walter Roth museum and suggested that this repository of collections thousands of years old would simply have to move out. It is evident in the dismissive response to established collective bargaining principles as it relates to pay for public servants. It is redolent of an authoritarian culture and disdaining of the need to consult and show full respect to all stakeholders. It must not continue.
