Dear Editor
I have been an employee at LBI Head Office for the past 25 years and I am nearing pensionable age but what I have overheard and seen happening there has never happened before. Many Chief Executive Officers came and went and GuySuCo had remained resilient but under this current CEO, things are falling apart rapidly not only due to the fact that he knows nothing about sugar but this is worse when his crass, uncouth, arrogant and dictatorial behaviour is brought into the equation.
Yesterday, I witnessed an unprecedented outburst of anger and vile behaviour from the CEO himself directed at a Senior Officer in the Procurement Department who has been there for more than 20 years which makes his contribution and experience invaluable. The man was angrily chased out of the meeting for explaining that the CEO was wrong in his submission. The CEO was angrily shouting. ‘Get out! Get out before I call the security!’ This outburst lasted a while. Sad to say the man resigned. Everyone around the Training building could have heard this tirade loud and clear. This is not the behaviour a senior executive officer should have but that is normal behavior for him.
This scenario was also played out a few days ago when two other senior managers were met with the same fate and forced to resign. Prior to this, the Senior Communications Officer was dismissed for explaining to the CEO that he was wrong, because it was he (the CEO) who had breached the Procurement guidelines and not her. There is a long line of competent Head Office and other senior employees who were dismissed or forced to resign. This includes people from the factory and the field departments.
How can GuySuCo go forward when this deliberate brain-drain is being engineered by the CEO himself? He should have been tapping into the vast knowledge of these people and building a workable strategic plan but instead he sees them as a threat. He wants to be always right but he needs to be aware that a man must know his limitations. My question is: Where is GuySuCo going? We have suffered a huge flood, we are suffering from a pandemic and now we have a CEO who is equally destructive. I am an Afro- Guyanese who voted for the present Government because of what the Coalition did to the sugar industry but now I am in a quandary as what my next move will be. We must not allow GuySuCo to be destroyed from within. Billions of taxpayers’ dollars will go down the drain if the President does not act now.
Sincerely,
Patrick Lewis
