Dear Editor,
Guyana undoubtedly produced a huge number of electoral and constitutional experts in the past five months. I wondered what would happen to them after the “electoral and constitutional crises” abated. Lo and behold it seems they have morphed into economic experts particularly sugar economists.
I am not an economic expert. However, my eco-conscious school-aged daughter goes to a local bookstore in Georgetown to buy notebooks, pencil cases, and journals. I often wondered why they have sugar plant motifs on them. I only learned a few weeks ago that they are made in India from sugar cane.
It would seem to me therefore, as a non-expert, that we should keep at least one factory open to produce notebooks for our school children (and export to CARICOM countries). I also learned that as we are moving to a circular economy that sugar cane and cassava, two resources that we have, are indispensable for several reasons but mainly for the numerous bio-degradable by-products including numerous packaging materials (a solution to single-use plastic and other waste and chemicals management issues). Yet still, it is being peddled that we need to keep the sugar estates open for “ethno-social” reasons. Incidentally, when are we going to stop using that excuse for our non-performance in all areas?
I saw that we are supposedly going to ask India for legal assistance. I have never heard India and sound legal systems used in the same sentence. I may be incorrect. However, the notebooks we use do come from India and they make many other articles from sugar cane and are noted for their technological acumen including the development of appropriate technologies.
And whilst we are arguing about sugar and rice, other CARICOM countries, mere dots in the oceans, are exporting tons of soursop pulp, soursop leaves, and bamboo charcoal making millions of United States dollars.
Bob Marley said it best, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery none but ourselves can free our minds”.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
