A week after the announcement that the Enmore sugar packaging plant will be leased for an oilfield services joint venture, there has been silence from the government on what that might mean for the future of the East Demerara Estate (EDE) and GuySuCo and GAWU are to meet tomorrow on the issue.
The government has also been mum on the terms of the lease and the disposal of 55 acres of land at Enmore. There has been no information on where exactly the land is located and what impact it might have on the reopening of the EDE which had been a manifesto promise of the PPP/C government.
The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) are scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss what happens to the more than 2,000 EDE sugar workers who were laid off when the estate was closed in 2017 and more specifically, the 30-odd workers currently employed at the packaging plant.
Meanwhile, questions continue to mount about the deal struck between local machining company Guysons and its United States partner, equipment manufacturer K&B Indus-tries, and government.
Various figures have been given for the joint venture which will transform the packaging plant into a fabrication facility for the oil & gas industry. In the venture, the company will take possession of 55 acres of EDE lands.
The East Coast Demerara packaging plant had been built in 2011 at a cost of US$12 million with part-financing from the European Union. While creating jobs, the joint venture deal also represents the privatisation of a key GuySuCo asset which had once been played up as a money spinner.
Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha on Tuesday told Stabroek News that the deal does not “interfere with the estate.”
“…This [deal] is with the packaging plant and we were thinking to relocate it to Albion because Albion is the premier estate grinding sugar… I don’t know why people blowing the thing out of proportion… Whatsoever was there [East Demerara Estate] remain in place we didn’t interfere with nothing else,” he told Stabroek News before directing additional questions to GuySuCo’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sasenarine Singh.
GuySuCo’s CEO on Tuesday told Stabroek News that he was not available to speak as he was in a meeting with the corporation’s Board of Directors. He indicated that the meeting would last until 9pm. Prior to that, he had referred this newspaper’s questions to the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) since that entity manages the corporation’s assets.
Just after taking office in September 2020, the CEO had visited the Enmore Packaging Plant and was photographed assisting in the packing of packaged sugar.
Packaged sugar has been touted as the lifeline for the industry as the CEO had stated that this year the company will focus on divesting from bulk sugar production to value-added packaged sugar for local and international markets.
Reassembled
When asked if moving the packaging plant machinery will be problematic, the Minister responded in the negative saying that all components can be taken apart and reassembled.
After its commissioning in May, 2011, the packaging plant which was built by the Indian firm, Surendra Engineering Corporation, developed mechanical issues.
Stabroek News in April 2012 had reported that the conveyor system belt which carries sugar from the factory to the packaging plant often bursts and sugar spills from the unit during transport. In addition, the “screw worm”-located at the end of the system – crushes the sugar resulting in the crystals having to be collected from the floor of the plant. The sugar is then transported to the factory via forklifts as well as manually, resulting in longer production time as well as increased costs.
There were also reports that the bearings on the shaker or sifter which separates the sugar crystals during processing often break resulting in the process grinding to a halt.
By October 2012, the Minister of Agriculture Leslie Ramsammy during a tour of the facility had said the plant had overcome start-up problems.
The commissioning was trumpeted by the then PPP/C government as a lifeline for the industry.
GAWU’s General Secretary Aslim Singh on Tuesday told this newspaper that the union is waiting on the meeting with GuySuCo tomorrow for clarity on the deal. He maintained that they were caught off guard by the announcement and while there were bits of information on activities mulled for the estate, the union had no confirmation.
A day after the announcement of the deal, the union wrote GuySuCo seeking clarification.
“We have seen, from media reports that GuySuCo plans to operate the plant through some alternative arrangements. We, at this time, are seeking to learn of these arrangements and what the next steps will envisage. The GAWU is aware that the Company continues to utilize the plant as it repositions itself as a value-added sugar producer.”
The union’s General Secretary noted that whatever information they had concerning the deal had been gathered from news reports.
During the announcement last Wednesday, Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance Dr Ashni Singh said that as a government, and even in opposition, his party had “committed to righting the grave wrongs that was done to sugar producing communities in Guyana.”
Stating that Enmore is one of the communities that felt the brunt of the wrong that was done to sugar producing communities when four estates were closed, government sought to deliver on the promise of ensuring communities return to economic activities.
Direct effort
“…the mobilization of this investment within Enmore is not by accident or by chance it is as a result of direct effort at the level of the President to ensure that we mobilize a significant investment in Enmore and we will be doing more of the same not just in Enmore but in all of the former sugar producing communities whose economics were devastated by the closure of the sugar industry,” he disclosed.
“This is a massive investment! It will be US$7.5 million initially… the immediate task is to get what used to be the processing facility into operation,” President Irfaan Ali remarked at an event held on the sidelines of the International Energy Conference and Expo last week when the announcement was made.
The Enmore Estate is one of those that were closed in 2017 under the David Granger-led APNU+AFC government. However, the Skeldon and Enmore estates were briefly reopened and some cane cutters were re-employed to demonstrate to potential buyers that the estates were viable and as such could be sold as going concerns.
Following the brief reopening, the management of the estate was under the control of the Special Purpose Unit (SPU) of government holding company, NICIL. None of the estates successfully attracted developers.
GAWU’s President Seepaul Narine in a letter to Stabroek News in October 2020, said that sugar industry assets were left to rot at the three shuttered estates.
“At Enmore I saw with my own eyes, how equipment was apparently chopped up and stripped away and seemingly carted off. I learnt at Enmore that several pieces of equipment cannot be accounted for as it appears to have vanished.
“I learnt too that at Enmore despite extensive checks, hundreds of steel punts have disappeared. As I walked through those estates, I wondered what really transpired and how could millions, if not billions, of the Guyanese people’s assets just disappear. I wondered whether they were sold off and if the monies can be accounted for?” he said in the letter in which he explained that he was given the opportunity to tour the factories in preparation for their reopening.
He added “I have heard the President himself saying public officials must answer, and I believe those who led NICIL-SPU are responsible and must give account of their actions and if guilty of any wrongdoing, must face the consequences.”
Some $3 billion was budgeted to be expended on the reopening of the Skeldon, Rose Hall, and Enmore Sugar Estate in the 2020 budget.
Speaking on the revitalization, Ali, a few weeks after taking up his post as President, told this newspaper that his government has to start from scratch and is now focussed on redeveloping farmlands in order to deliver on its campaign promise to reopen shuttered estates since the former administration left the industry in ruins.
