Five heavy-duty tractors, costing a total of $98 million, were yesterday commissioned at the Rose Hall Estate by Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha, who said they represented a “new beginning” for the factory, which was shuttered by the former administration.
The tractors, which are expected to be operational before the end of July following a series of training programmes, will be used in the fields for land preparation as the factory prepares to resume operation. Over 600 persons have since been reemployed at the estate, which Mustapha said was a “real achievement.”
“These tractors will help to bring back the cultivation of Rose Hall Estate once again into proper being,” he said.
According to Mustapha, at the end of the first crop, “they will have almost 40,000 tonnes of cane.”
Without giving an actual date, Mustapha assured the workers that the factory will reopen “and it will reopen shortly,” telling the workers that the Rose Hall estate will have to make a valuable contribution to the country’s development as he then reminded them that following its closure the communities surrounding the estate and where workers resided were “plunged into depression.”
He told the workers to never forget that as a result of the closure many families were destroyed, and residents were not only unemployed but unable to provide meals for their families, with others having to leave the region to seek all sorts of employment elsewhere. He added that there was even a decline at the schools since sugar workers were unable to provide an education to their children due to them losing their jobs.
Mustapha then stressed that his government takes its commitments and promises to the citizens of Guyana very seriously “and today we are here to fulfill promises.”
According to Mustapha, every time the government allocates money to GuySuCo, members of the Opposition “especially people like [Khemraj] Ramjattan always try to question and say that we putting money in the wrong place but they never looked at the social impact at the closure of the estates like these.”
Sasenarine Singh, Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo, said the commissioning while a simple one is extremely important given the impact the closure of the estate had on the community.
He then praised the government for procuring the tractors as he claimed that if this was not done then it would have been impossible to have the estate reopened. “It’s going to do great work… I know that they are going to be tilling in excess of 600 hectares of land in this crop coming up.”
Meanwhile, Singh said that he had a walkthrough of the factor yesterday and he was amazed at the transformation which has been done by the workers, for which he thanked them.
The workers gathered at the commissioning were extremely happy and excited about the new machinery as many of them told Stabroek News that it shows that the estate will be fully reopened.
