Dear Editor,
I read, with interest, the report of Mr. Nigel Hughes’ first press conference as leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC) in the July 9, 2024, issue of the “Kaieteur News”, I was disappointed. My disappointment stemmed from the fact that Mr. Hughes has adopted the same methodology of the former and present PNC and AFC leaders. From the very beginning he has chosen to mis-represent and distort events in our country. Same old PNC politics. It was reported that he urged the government not to undertake big projects without feasibility studies and used as his example the Skeldon Expansion Project in the Sugar Industry. That is very far from the truth.
That project had a very good plan. It was conceived at a time when the European Union was saying that they would bring an end to the Sugar Protocol which had guaranteed prices for sugar producing countries if the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions. The PPP/C government joined with their ACP colleagues to resist the EU plan. At the same time, it began to plan for the eventuality of the EU succeeding to abandon the decades’ old agreement. The EU eventually did after it had lost a case brought by Australia and Brazil to the World Trade Union (WTO).
The administration was faced with two options, one was to close the industry down, and the other was to take steps to keep it going and save jobs in the industry. The government chose to take steps to save the industry and jobs. It charged GuySuCo’s Board to come up with a feasible plan for the industry. The Board tapped into the talents it had in the sector and used international experts to craft the plan. Booker/Tate (BT) was chosen as the international expert and engineer of the projects.
The plan was to transform the sugar industry from being just a producer of raw sugar into a complex with other revenue streams and at the same time to reduce the average cost of producing raw sugar. It envisaged the producing electricity (co-generation); a new distillery and a refinery to process our raw sugar into industrial sugar (white sugar) among other value-added products. The plan was sound, the problem was with its implementation which Booker Tate, the International expert was contracted to do. Without going into details it was the board’s view that Booker Tate was responsible for the many problems that developed with that project.
Because of that conviction, the Board withheld payments to Booker Tate. B.T decided to take the issue to court. GuySuCo cross-charged Booker Tate and I thought we had a good chance of winning the case and make B.T pay for its poor project management. Unfortunately, when the government changed in 2015 the PNC and AFC regime decided to release the withheld money to Booker Tate and to withdrew the Board’s case against B.T from the court. That allowed Booker Tate to walk away with millions.
The PNC/AFC regime then proceeded to close estates and dismissed thousands of workers. That was a blatant racial and political attack on sugar workers whom the PNC/AFC considered to be PPP supporters. From their (PNC/AFC) warped point of view this was aimed at damaging the PPP.
I say this because at the time the PNC/AFC decided to close the estates, the industry was overcoming the problems at Skeldon. This can be confirmed by the production figures of 2014 and 2015 when Skeldon took the lead in sugar production. Moreover, the technical team that the PNC/AFC put together to examine the operation of the industry did not recommend closing estates.
Mr. Hughes must have known all this since the issue was ventilated publicly for many years. As late as April of this year Mr. Vickram Oditt and I had an exchange on the issue. The debate was not the lack of planning but whether the plan was changed. In addition to all of the above, Mr. Hughes had to be aware since he was Booker Tate’s lawyer in the case against GuySuCo while being chairman of the AFC. Therefore, to make the statement which he was reported to have made was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public for narrow political ends. He is obviously practicing the politics of deception.
In closing, let me say that almost all the big projects that were undertaken by successive PPP/Civic governments were carefully planned and all had feasibility studies done. The only one that I am aware of where the PPP/C government did not go along with the advice of the experts related to the bauxite operations in Linden. The experts advised that the company be closed but both Presidents Jagan and Jagdeo refused to do so. They both worked to save the industry and workers’ job. Their decision did not only save the industry but allowed Linden to remain a viable community.
Sincerely,
Donald Ramotar
