Dear Editor,
With the greatest respect to Mr. Vickram Oditt (in SN) it must be submitted that his connection with the sugar industry has been substantively less than the undersigned and other contemporaries who still exist. It cannot be fairly disputed that several leading decision-makers in the sugar industry were nouveau arrivées – appointed by respective administrations, not necessarily on the basis of superior related experience. The writer’s own professional experience covers a total of 24 years beginning with Bookers Sugar Estates and onto GuySuCo, essentially at senior executive levels, during which time, and since has been documenting the vicissitudes of the industry, resulting from the convoluted decisions attributed to all the political administrations, barring none.
It is against this background that one seeks to remind of the PPP’s surreptitious intention to concentrate sugar production in Berbice (Region 6) – indeed the strategic reason for the construction of the elephantine Skeldon factory project which was intended to contribute the overall production of 400,000 tonnes of sugar annually. This failure substantively started the depletion of the sugar industry – now conveniently overlooked. And it was the same administration who closed Diamond Estate; then in closing LBI/Ogle merged it with Enmore Estate into East Demerara Estate. But what seems to have been overlooked, however conveniently, was the earliest attempt to close Wales Estate, West Bank Demerara – but which was frustrated by the intensive communication campaign waged weekly by the pioneering TV personality, CN Sharma on Channel 6.
The exercise resulted in the reversal of the decision to close – but in fact proved a postponement. It is respectfully submitted that a subsequent careful agricultural productivity analysis pointed to Uitvlugt being the more promising operational location. The records would show that the undersigned was the initial coordinator of cooperative cane farming development in the 1960s on behalf of Bookers Sugar Estates, Demerara Company, and the principal funding partners Barclays Bank DC&O (now GBTI) and Royal Bank of Canada (now Republic Bank). One reflects on Kahlil Gibran’s ‘there is no such thing as ‘the truth’, only ‘a truth’.’
Sincerely,
E.B. John
Former Director BSE/GuySuCo
