Dear Editor,
Reference to `Ali says gov’t forced to start from scratch to revamp decimated sugar estates’ that was carried in your September 23 edition, and in particular the excerpt “Everything has been destroyed. I don’t know what kind of hurricane passed through those factories and those fields. You have no canes for the factories”, and most horrible “Can you imagine that GuySuCo don’t have more than two vehicles at the moment”, and “They don’t have more than two working tractors”. “This is what took place in the last five years. They don’t have any vehicles”.
Editor, those were the words of no other than the President of this country. What he described there is more than a travesty, it’s a tragedy in the sugar industry. It borders on an act of criminality. It’s unbelievable that a huge company like GuySuCo that received billions of dollars in government’s subventions was subjected to such level of mismanagement that renders it with just two serviceable tractors and vehicles, each, at the end of the past five years.
I fervently hope that the President will launch an immediate investigation into the disposal or destruction of those assets in GuySuCo. The current management of the company who were all there when these assets were disposed of need to disclose who was behind the directives for the disposals and to whom were they either sold or gifted to, or whether management themselves authorised those disposals. I further hope that replacement of these assets will not be made without an investigation being done to reveal who was responsible for their disposals and/or destruction, and those who were responsible must be held accountable in accordance with the law.
Further, the horrible statement “you have no canes for the factories” must demand clear answers from the management and the immediate past Board on what transpired in the past 5 years that the cultivations have “no canes”. It’s no surprise therefore that cane sugar production for the past 5 years was under a precipitous decline.
A full investigation must be conducted with immediate effect.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
