Agriculture remains of crucial importance to Guyana’s economy, despite its poor performance over the last few years.  Sugar, in particular, accounts for some 15,000 workers, more than 6 percent of the national labour force, and is the single largest employer.  These 15,000 workers pay taxes and contribute to the socio-economic development of the nation; they are not a liability to the nation, they are one of its best asset. So any offer of opportunities to the workers is not a favour being granted to them by this Granger-led PNC Administration, but a fulfillment of a sacrosanct duty.
If the workers are to roll over and accept that ridiculous and senseless “State Paper on the Future of the Sugar Industry”, as presented by the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Holder, then their actions would be construed as a sign of appeasement and weakness.  This is the time for the sugar workers to escalate their awareness and stand up against the injustices being imposed on them by this Granger-led PNC Administration.  Sugar workers must stand up with a sense of duty to their families, their communities, and their country. Thus they must expose and oppose all acts of wrongdoing being conducted against them by this Granger-led PNC Administration.
GAWU and NAACIE cannot pander to these agents of ECONOMIC DESTRUCTION, or else their actions will be seen by the workers as an analgesic balm to the oppressors. The sugar workers have for centuries given their sweat and blood to build and mould this nation; they are not step children of Guyana. That is why these acts of incompetence and cowardice from the players in this Granger-led PNC Administration — especially from people like Moses Nagamootoo, Noel Holder, Clive Thomas and Errol Hanoman, who continue to falsely pass themselves off as friends of the sugar belt — must be publicly and promptly stripped naked. If this State Paper is the best this Granger-led PNC Administration has, then the people of this administration were never equipped, in the first place, to even run a cake shop on the street corner.
The only solution to the sugar issue is one crafted with the workers as equal partners. Instead, today, this Granger-led PNC Administration has done everything in its power to discredit the sugar industry, and is even engaging in peddling wholesale untruths.  There is no other description for the “jumbie” numbers put forward by Clive Thomas on GuySuCo’s debt.  I have seen nothing to date that illustrates any attempt to bring about value chain improvement in the sugar industry.  Rather, this Thomas/ Hanoman Team continues to take measures that are destroying the factories, destroying the fields, destroying the other cost-reduction opportunities; and, most importantly, have actively destroyed the morale in the workforce.  Instead, their only strategy today is subterfuge and deception.
Clive Thomas claimed that the GuySuCo debt is G$82 billion, but when one commences to drill down into the details, one can easily find that some G$30 billion are associated with the now collapsed Skeldon Sugar Factory and Skeldon Power Plant. Ask yourself who made the decision to construct these facilities: the Cabinet of the then Government of Guyana or GuySuCo? The decision to borrow and spend that G$30 billion was made by the Cabinet of the then Government of Guyana.  The only place for these debts are on the books of the Ministry of Finance, as part of the National Debt incurred by the Central Government. They have no place on GuySuCo’s books, and are an imposition on the workers.
Then Clive Thomas tries to sell the Brooklyn Bridge by informing the Guyanese people that GuySuCo has an immediate debt of G$82 billion, not realizing that buried in that number are another G$30 billion assigned as the value of the long-term Employee Retirement Benefits. But the treatment and cash flow implications of this long-term Employee Retirement Benefits, according to the International Accounting Standards No. 19 and 26, are not short-term.  But Thomas makes a big hullabaloo about it.
So, in reality, GuySuCo has only about G$22 billion active and current debt that has an immediate impact on the company. Aren’t G$22 billion more manageable than G$82 billion?  When will this Granger-led PNC Administration cease and desist from their dark art of financial quackery?