May 28, 2022
Dear Editor,
The records would show that the factory at Uitvlugt sugar estate, West Coast, Demerara, has been malfunctioning for some years, perhaps more than its counterparts in other locations, all of which had to cope with decades old equipment. It was for this reason that the last GuySuCo management thoughtfully recalled a team including retired Directors of Factory Operations and Factory Managers to provide the analytical and experiential support needed across factories, but with a focus on Uitvlugt Estate where it was recognised that the local engineering capability happened to be below the preferred requirements. As it turned out, on the change of the highest decision-makers these personnel were sent back into retirement. Interestingly, one replacement was in the appointment to the position of Director, Factory Operations, of a retired Estate Factory Manager, not previously acclaimed for performance that would have been helpful to Uitvlugt’s technical predicament.
The foregoing is just to support the concerns of the committed decision-makers that the replacement of the identified faulty engineering component would take some indeterminable time to resolve the economic and employment plight being faced by field and factory workers of the estate.
It has to be recalled that in 2017 there was declared what was called the ‘Uitvlugt Estate Improvement Programme’, approved by the GuySuCo Board; which aimed to achieve a target of some 40,000 tonnes of sugar as the estate’s annual production by 2019. This was partly dependent on the successful transition of ex-employees of the closed Wales Estate, and critically the contribution of the eleven cooperative cane farming societies whose 200 members formerly supplied cane to that Estate from some 2100 hectares of cane cultivation. They (and their ex-employees) are now also indisposed.
Then again the aforementioned ‘Improvement Programme’ was intended to include additional small cane farming in the Uitvlugt area, so there should be a number of ‘small businessmen’ to be identified as having been indisposed by this shut down, and therefore probably eligible for a form of compensation.
Based on the report in SN of May 24, it seems uncertain whether the Vice-President, the Minister responsible for Finance, the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Local Government and Regional Administration, and the Minister of Public Works, seen in the interaction with the unemployed sugar workers, were at all advised about the substantial plight of the cane farming communities, whose assets must be rotting. If any of the latter were present at the optimistic presentation, they must be pondering on if they would be eligible for the following offers:
– small business grants of up to $250,000
– part-time jobs (for ten days a month)
– opportunities in the construction and labour sector
– wages and salaries for six is to ‘remain at the estate’
– assistance ‘fully throughout
the process of transitioning to new jobs
– participation in poultry farming
What did not emerge was the expected periodicity of this hiatus –
a) estimated arrival time of replacement equipment
b) estimated time of installatory operations
c) the quality and acreage (estimated) of cane that would be
available, and estimated production rate of the factory.
d) Assurance of the engineering and processing capability to
effectively maintain the replacement equipment and factory
operations as a whole
In addition to the above it would appear not too early to give consideration to the possible effect of the unavailability of some transitioned ‘small business entrepreneurs’ for estate re-employment. (There is just that implication of eventual severance compensation).
Nor does it seem at all inappropriate for the Estate Manager to advise the relevant decision-makers of the implications of the contract relationships between the estate and the respective cane farming cooperative societies, specifically under the National Cane Farming Committee Act (1965) Cane Farmers Contract (General Conditions) Rules.
The foregoing is respectfully submitted with a view to helping to address another of the substantive depletions in an industry that remains in the DNA of the undersigned, who was the appointed initial industry coordinator of small cane farming development of the sugar industry as agreed between Premier Dr. Cheddi Jagan and Jock Campbell, Chairman of Booker Worldwide starting with the 57 pioneering Belle Vue Cane Farmers each with 15 acre plots. GuySuCo still has an active Cane Farming Development Officer.
It may be worth noting the historical importance of the Belle Vue cane farmers more as community of 57 sugar workers brought together by Bookers from each of its estates in the early 1960s, and accommodated in specially built housing, each with a kitchen garden, and in the wider facility of a community centre the first deliberate developmental programme for families in growing canes under estate supervision and selling the produce of some 855 acres to Wales Estate on agreed terms. It has proved a social and economic success over the past six decades.
Hopefully, much sooner than later, there will be a comparable motivational communication setting for the relaunching of Uitvlugt factory and estate operations as a whole
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John