Bitter sugar politics…Agri. Minister,
APNU Exec. member clash over ailing
sugar industry
Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy through a public missive yesterday dismissed the calls by the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) to scrap the sugar industry and make moves towards more viable avenues.
Anthony Viera
Ramsammy said that the coalition has now come with another wild assault on the sugar industry and its workers with their proposed plan. “They now want Guyana to end sugar. They want us to grow tilapia in the sugar cane fields. However, Anthony Vieira who serves as the APNU’s expert on agricultural issues says, “What Mr Ramsammy must accept is that after nearly 22 years of corruption and incompetence they have destroyed the industry, the workers themselves are saying so through their union representatives and are demanding a new Board of Directors. He must accept that sugar is dead in this country. If sugar is not viable and aquaculture is, then the workers will be guaranteed work in perpetuity without being a drain on the national purse.”
Further, Dr. Ramsammy also sought to make clear that the Government’s plan is also to invest in sugar as well as Tilapia.
He added, “Let me be unequivocally clear – APNU’s call to close the sugar industry is dead wrong. APNU’s plan to close the sugar industry is wicked and it is a plan of a party that has no moral right to even ask the people for the right to be the Government of Guyana one day.”
In response, Vieira has said, “No one is saying let’s remove the sugar industry and leave nothing in its place which can employ the sugar workers, especially since it is clear that the workers continue to migrate away from the industry since it cannot afford to pay them a proper wage. What we are saying is let us give them an industry which will employ them all, but will be lighter work and better pay since aquaculture is much more profitable than sugar cane harvesting. The PPP loves the working class; they especially like to see them work hard. He is also demonstrating his total disqualifications of being Minister of Agriculture in this country.”
He added, “They make it seem as though they have a vibrant and flourishing sugar industry. The sugar industry today is in the Intensive Care Unit and is not expected to survive. We have a manifesto from the last election and nowhere in it, did we propose closing the sugar industry since the future of the sugar workers is always uppermost in our minds and
Dr. Leslie Ramsammy
we object to Ramsammy distorting our position in this manner. If they can fix the industry before the next elections which is impossible, then we do not have an issue. But to ask for more than $9 billion dollars every year to bail out this industry which is in such dire straits due to the incompetence and corruption of the Government is unfair to the workers, the nation and the sugar workers themselves since it is their taxes as well including VAT which is being siphoned off to keep this industry afloat. What is madness is to keep an industry when everyone knows that it is dead; when there exists a very viable alternative and he does not deal with our suggestion to keep the sugar industry alive by producing Ethanol.”
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