The Rose Hall estate, which was closed under the David Granger administration in 2017 is slated for re-opening on Saturday, September 23rd 2023 according to Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), Sasenarine Singh.
Singh made this disclosure yesterday at the opening of the 22nd Delegates Congress of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU).
The CEO expressed gratitude to the government for the technical and financial support that brought GuySuCo to the point of re-opening the estate.
The reopening of Rose Hall was promised by the ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) in the lead up to the March 2020 general elections.
Two other estates shuttered by the former government, East Demerara and Skeldon, are also supposed to be reopened but there has been no significant progress.
Recently, Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha told the National Assembly that to support sugar production at Rose Hall Estate, about 1,100 workers were rehired.
He was defending a request for additional funding – some $1.5 billion – for the provision of additional resources to facilitate the rehabilitation of 1,572 hectares of temporarily abandoned lands at Albion, Blairmont, Rose Hall, and Uitvlugt estates.
He also noted that more than 4,000 hectares of cane have been replanted at this estate and the government expects that 56,000 tonnes of sugar would be produced next year.
Earlier this year, when the National Assembly was considering the 2023 National Budget, Mustapha said $1.195 billion will be used to support the re-opening of this estate. Spending will cater for the purchase of new equipment and rehabilitating older equipment.
Last year, the Parliamentary Committee of Supply approved $1 billion in supplementary funding for GuySuCo to help with the retooling of sugar estates.
A sum of $363 million is for the Albion estate, $76 million for the Blairmont estate and $561 million for the Rose Hall estate.
In recent days, cane harvesters from the Albion and Blairmont estates took strike action after having been told they would be transferred back to the Rose Hall estate. They were insisting first on a severance package before returning to Rose Hall. The transfer to the Rose Hall estate has now been taken off the table.
