Dear Editor,
I see the usual drivel written about GuySuCo by Robin Singh in the Stabroek newspaper of August 11, 2024. In which he alleges that GuySuCo and its 8000 workers have received another 4 billion tranche, and it shows the PPP’s commitment to the industry and its workers and (sic) notwithstanding that the Opposition is objecting to the new $4 billion tranche, as a complete waste of national funds. It is Singh’s view that the $4 billion will revive the industry. Obviously, his love of fiction forbids him to see the truth. And today 14th August 2024, I see the Opposition asking some telling questions in Parliament, with quite unacceptable responses from the PPP.
I promised myself that I would not write on GuySuCo matters anymore, since it is very disturbing to do the numbers and see the depths to which that entity has sunken, but I am going to write to expose any publication which seeks to tell the public that what the PPP is doing in GuySuCo makes sense.
Editor, I and former colleagues have been doing the numbers, and we are convinced that GuySuCo’s cost per pound of sugar today exceeds 1 US dollar/pound, and since the production of GuySuCo is so poor, we appear to be importing sugar from other countries like Guatemala and Belize today.
But now, since I see the new CEO whose qualifications to be in that position has to be purely political, since I was on that Board for 3 years 2020 September to September 2023, I can’t say that I saw the gentleman at many of those meetings, and I also don’t remember him making much of a contribution at even those he did attend.
Furthermore, as a cane farmer delivering cane to Uitvlugt estate, I consider him to be not only incapable of performing as CEO, especially since his back up staff in the corporation is at best poor, but he has placed himself in a complete conflict of interest situation, since he is the CEO of a company to which he is also delivering cane. On the 21st May, 1976, i.e. the night of the nationalisation of the Guyana Sugar industry in 1976, I attended a dinner at the Hotel Tower with my father and the then Minister of Agriculture at that time, Gavin Kennard, after we came from the handing over of the sugar holdings of Bookers to the Government of Guyana. That night at dinner, Mr. Kennard told my father that he was their first choice to be the new chairman of GuySuCo, not Harold Davis, but he failed the test because he is also a cane farmer delivering cane to that company. As villainous as the PPP makes him out to be, Burnham at least understood two things, 1. That you can’t run a country with total jokers and incompetent people, and 2. You can’t place them in conflict-of-interest positions, e.g. Ministers whose families are getting massive government contracts, etc. The alleged corrupt Burnham government understood the danger of conflict of interest, which apparently the PPP can’t or refuses to accept. The Minister is now on the record as looking around Guyana and did not see any competence, that’s why he brought the Cubans. All I can say is that he is completely blind, but cunning, because Cubans won’t alert the people of Guyana when they see the massive wrongdoing going on there.
Editor, to counter these spurious claims made by Robin Singh et al, I must give evidence why such a very complex corporation can be destroyed very quickly when manned by these incompetent political hacks the PPP keeps putting in charge of our national business. My example is that in 2021 from the 15th of May to the 12th of June, only a total of 25.3 inches [642.4 mm] of rain fell at Albion/Port Mourant. This was not an exorbitant amount of rainfall by any yardstick for Albion’s designed drainage system, in Guyana to drain our rainy seasons since Dutch times, the entire country’s drainage system was designed to remove 1.5 inches of precipitation every 24 hours in Agriculture, and 2 inches in the housing areas. Using those criteria in the period 15th May to 12th June, if the Albion drainage system was working properly, the estate could have removed [29 days @ 1.5 inches/day] 43 inches [1092.2 mms] of rainfall. When I was chairman of the operations committee, I investigated how there could have been a flood of the entire Albion cultivation for two months literally destroying the entire cultivation, with such a small amount of rainfall. I discovered that of the 11 huge 3-foot diameter drainage pumps Albion/Port Mourant has to drain its cultivation only six were working.
Also the incompetent management at Albion at the time, failed to secure its cultivation from the rising Canje River, which has always been the custom and practice in the past. I also discovered that the “technical team” of GuySuCo wrote a pack of lies and submitted it to the MOA and the President. This led in the end, to the President [wrongly and publicly] arguing with the head of the GAWU union in a confrontation at the Enmore Martyrs’ Ceremony. That flood was not a natural disaster, it was caused by incompetence and neglect. In less than one year after taking over from the coalition, under a CEO, who never worked in sugar or clearly in any other major corporation before, was appointed by the PPP, and presided over the almost complete destruction of the Albion cultivation.
Editor that day when I blew up in the Board meeting, I had already resigned, but the chairman begged me to attend the meeting, and after three years of nonsense, I was unable to contain myself further, when the CEO refused to abide by the ruling of the chair and called him Lowenfeld. Because of me and the then Chairman, Mr. David, of Demerara Bank, constantly complaining about how badly the corporation is being run, the board of GuySuCo met the President and other major functionaries of the government, an unprecedented 5 or 6 times in three years. Throwing money at GuySuCo now is just fueling more corruption and incompetence and has nothing to do with reviving that dead corporation.
Tony Vieira
