Dear Editor,
One gets the impression that not many observers would be aware that the GAWU has been represented in the Board of Directors of the Guyana Sugar Corporation for some time.
GAWU itself sat with GuySuCo managers at East Demerara Estates (Enmore) in 2017 and listened to NICIL’s SPU spewing optimism about the dozens of prospective investors who would be interested in the sugar estates that were identified for closure – Skeldon, Rose Hall, Enmore itself.
There was the promising indication that these business persons would be committed to reviving sugar production, nuanced in the prospect of a shorter time-frame than has since resulted.
At the time of writing there appears hardly any indication of any viable investor interested in sugar (the future now being focused on oil and gas – at sea).
Two years or more after, there is no declaration of a time-line for realising the initial sugar-coated dream. The dreamers do not appear to be mindful about factories lying idle, skills disappearing, and once productive agricultural land left idle.
But thousands of others are mindful.
GuySuCo, in anticipation of offering alternative productive livelihoods, had organised an EU-funded programme in which consultants from Europe – NIRAS – engaged with training GuySuCo managers to train disemployed agricultural workers in particular, how to get involved in producing marketable other crops. This imaginative programme invited the participation of such collaborating agencies as:
Guyana Livestock Development Authority
New Guyana Marketing Corporation
Ministry of Agriculture
Guyana Rice Development Board
Small Business Bureau
Institute of Private Enterprise Development
The Commercial Banks were also invited to show interest.
Amongst the commodities which were recommended to be promoted were:
citrus
dairy
small ruminants
beef
coconut
pineapple
rice
The overall objective of the project was to transition former employees into independent self-sufficient farmers.
Alas there has been no word of any follow-up action since 2017, no word of reactivation of dismantled sugar operations; no word of accessibility of idle land to long serving agricultural employees; all totalling into a loud spew of silence about an ill-conceived concept for the future of the sugar industry (?)
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
