President Irfaan Ali yesterday said he intends to meet with executive management and the Board of Directors of Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) in a bid to end the acrimony between them.
“I intend to bring the parties together in [the] new week and have a conversation,” Ali yesterday said on the sidelines of the 4th Anniversary celebration of the Buxton-Friendship Museum, Archives and Culture Centre.
Asked by Sunday Stabroek about the strained relationship between the corporation’s management and the Board of Directors, Ali said his focus is on ensuring that all stakeholders work with one agenda—reviving GuySuCo.
He stated that the focus of the corporation should be making it once again financially feasible.
Leaked audio of a board meeting last week gave the public a glimpse of the hostilities that exist between Chief Executive Officer Sasenarine Singh and the board, including former member Anthony Vieira.
At a meeting prior to Vieira’s resignation, both him and Singh were engaged in a heated dispute over the management of the corporation and the decision to purchase the articulate tractors as part of efforts to mechanise the industry.
The row stemmed from GuySuCo utilising recommendations of an independent team to procure articulated tractors.
Vieira, who resigned as Vice-Chairman from the board in June, criticized Singh’s performance in a letter published in this newspaper on August 3 and denounced the purchase of the tractors. Vieira also accused Singh of lying to the board of directors and the president.
Singh, in response to the accusations, has since challenged Vieira and critics to produce evidence of corruption within the executive management of the entity. “I want him to bring the evidence of the corruption. I challenge him. And I challenge any Guyanese to show me any corruption this office was involved in over the last two years. I challenge this entire nation to show me one iota of this office seeking any gift. And that is how brave I am on it because I live a very simple life,” Singh said as he responded to the allegations against him.
When contacted for a comment on the CEO’s challenge, Vieira told the Sunday Stabroek “that it should be as clear as day that I am saying that the Game tractor purchases are riddled with irregularities and is therefore itself a corrupt deal.
Singh has said that a year of experimentation proved that the articulated tractor technology is better-suited to prepare fields for mechanised harvesting when compared to the fixed-frame technology.
Serious apprehensions by workers
Meanwhile, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) on Friday said workers have expressed their concerns regarding the new articulated tractor technology being touted from several perspectives. “This causes us serious apprehensions as their practical views should not be discounted,” GAWU said in a statement in response to comments made by Singh in another section of the media.
GAWU noted that it engaged workers who have utilised both types of machines in seeking to get a better understanding of the two types of tractor technologies.
GAWU also highlighted that in seeking to distance himself from the purchase of the articulated tractors, Singh shared that deliberations took place at the level of a Board sub-committee. It noted that all considerations and deliberations by the Board’s Procurement Committee are based on formal recommendations by Executive Management.
“In the case of the articulated tractors, the CEO has affirmed that the recommendation to pursue articulated tractors emanated from his ‘technical personnel’. As the CEO was he not involved in the articulation of the recommendation?” it questioned.
Addressing the union’s representation on the sub-committee, GAWU reiterated that the sub-committee comprised several other directors, and it was their collective deliberations that led to a position that such tractors be bought for trials to determine their efficacy. It added that when the matter was discussed with the highest levels of the government, it was ordered that the company purchase two such tractors for trials.
GAWU also noted Singh’s allusion to the independent report done by a team of engineers of the Ministry of Agriculture. It said the union has obtained a copy of this report and has carefully perused the findings. “Of significant note to us was that the team when addressing the productivity of the articulated versus fixed frame tractors reproduced GuySuCo data on a report that previously done by its own ‘technical’ personnel. Instructively, GuySuCo’s data was prepared long before any decision was made on the procurement of the articulated tractor and even before the submission of the independent team of the Ministry of Agriculture We would have thought that independent team would have sought to at least confirm what the Corporation’s ‘technical’ personnel would have advanced, rather than replicating all of GuySuCo’s productivity and operating parameters in their report,” it said. “The GAWU did recognize the team offered other findings but for us productivity and operating parameters remain the critical considerations, and these parameters were determined by GuySuCo’s “technical personnel.’ The independent team did not submit, in our view, an independent report,” it added.
GAWU said the union has also received confidentially the results of an actual trial between the two types of machines at Albion Estate during 2021 and that evaluation offers varying perspective on the efficacy of one machine type as against the other. While noting that those findings may require more careful and deeper examination and analysis, the union said it recognised the attempt by the Board of Directors of GuySuCo to undertake such examination but lamented that those efforts may have suffered a still birth.
GAWU stressed that it wants to see the sugar industry succeed and play an even more meaningful role in the country. “Such efforts of course require an all-hands-on deck approach,” it added.
