In his home village of Whim, Corentyne, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo last evening defended his government’s decision to close several sugar estates by saying that these were “absolutely useless as producing sugar estates.”
He said, “We realised that the sugar industry was going down and those one[s] at Skeldon, Canje, Rose Hall, those at LBI, Enmore, that they were absolutely useless as producing sugar estates. We decided to close them down and in doing so we saved the jobs of 10,000 sugar workers.” According to Nagamootoo, after the APNU+AFC was elected to government, in order to rescue sugar workers they had to subsidise the industry with $1 billion for 38 months. He then told the gathering at Whim Middle Walk Dam that it was the Skeldon Estate which “pulled down the rest of the sugar industry.”
He said the PPP/C administration spent some $50 billion on the Skeldon Estate, “… and (former President Bharrat) Jagdeo said without Skeldon, sugar is dead.” However, he opined, that sugar died at Skeldon since the estate remained a “white elephant.”