Dear Editor,
Those of us who are better informed about the sugar industry of Guyana, indeed through high-level experience in managing it over decades, would be most amused by the vacuous debate, as reported, on Monday, 05 December in the National Assembly, in relation to the further $1B donated to GuySuCo.
Neither the Minster of Agriculture, nor the Opposition showed adequate familiarity with the industry. They simply toyed with the numbers – additionally to the Corporation’s $47Bn Budget. According to the presentation the money is to be utilised (at least) for:
1) development of cultivable lands
11) rehabilitation of machinery in factories
111) 2000 acres of Rose Hall Estate to be put back into cultivation
1v) aim to return to operation by the second crop of 2023
v) 1,500 workers involved
With regard to the above there is no mention of the staff requirements respectively for Field, Factory, Finance, and Human Resources Management, and Supervisory and Non-Supervisory levels. Indeed, the records would show that Rose Hall Estate collapsed as a result of persistently defaulting management performance – in Field and Factory. The relevant performance evaluation and disciplinary records should be checked, in order to better understand the basis for ‘achieving operations in the second crop of 2023’, taking account of the unqualified personnel contracted to plant canes, irrespective of yield potential that should be vetted by appropriate research teams.
In this connection therefore, it is difficult to understand what the Minister meant when he adverted to just ‘1,500 workers’ being involved, for in the industry the terminology normally specifies skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled categories. This casual reference to ‘workers’ must indicate his own under-informed status.
Again, the Minister’s reference to the following allocations must be totally meaningless to those managers who must wonder whether they had prepared the respective budgets:
– Albion Estate – $363m
– Blairmont Estate – $76m
– Rose Hall Estate – 561m
with Uitvlugt Estate totally ignored.
Next there is the most casual reference to non-functional equipment, all in unidentified locations.
Then non-sequentially reference is made to the following:
October 2021
$12 Billion budgeted
– to set up equipment to ensure ‘we can continue with the tillage (in unspecified locations,) where the Minister said that:
a) ‘equipment was set aside and left in the fields’
b) ‘keep discovering more equipment need to be rehabilitated’.
It is difficult to be convinced that the alleged ‘discovery’ process could last from as long as 2020 – 2022.
So while the Opposition and the reader, are trying to cope with all these obfuscations, the Honourable Minister adds the following: ‘At commencement of Government’s term estates were operating at 49 per cent of capacity and now they have been rehabilitated and are working optimally!
Can the Minister please translate ‘optimally’, particularly in the light of all the operational deficits highlighted earlier? As well as his climactic assertion: ‘We will continue to ensure that we make factories more efficient modernised and at the same time reduce the cost of production’ – no mention as to what costs have been since assumption of his portfolio (Refer to ‘optimally?)
The undersigned in particular wonders about the very profound indifference to the most critical component of the industry’s operations – its human resources, the current capacity of which needs to be seriously questioned, following the precipitate termination of highly qualified and experienced staff at the beginning of this government’s take-over, and replaced essentially with beginners who brought little or no analytical and historical value to the organisation. Now there is no reference to the Human Resources Development programme, e.g. scholarships to the Guyana School of Agriculture and University of Guyana, in respect of which one wonders whether the long established ‘Performance Evaluation System’ is conducted in relation to the standard organisation Succession Plan.
On the other hand, there is much interest shown in ‘Contractors’ who are unlikely to be subject to any form of evaluation. In fooling the Opposition, it only shows how effectively the Government fools itself.
E. B. John
Former Human Resources Director
GuySuCo