The reopening of the Rose Hall Sugar Estate in Region Six is not sitting well with the Alliance for Change (AFC), and the political party believes that the government’s position on sugar will take the sector and the country at large into a black hole.
Recently, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), Sasenarine Singh, disclosed that the Rose Hall Sugar Estate is slated for a grand re-opening on September 23.
However, the Leader of the AFC, Khemraj Ramjattan, noted that no amount of money will return the cash-strapped GuySuCo to profitability.
“The rehabilitation and reopening of the Rose Hall and Canje Estate is just more unwise spending to keep a PPP’s ill-advised manifesto promise in tack,” Ramjattan said at a press conference on Friday last.
Ramjattan argued that there was no economic rationale behind reopening this estate, noting that rightsizing the sector as the Coalition government did was proven to be the best policy.
Moreover, the AFC Leader contented that the strike action by cane harvesters from the Albion and Blairmont estates will compound the labour shortage the industry is already facing.
“The AFC knows there is a tremendous deficit of technical and managerial skills in the sector that is why the reshuffling of the board membership and top management has happened last year, will never boost production,” the AFC Leader remarked.
To this end, Ramjattan posited that the ruling People’s Progressive Party will never get sugar right owing to them being blinded by politics rather than economics.
He provided several reasons to back his case that sugar will not work since a pound of sugar is less than the cost of production.
Compounding this, according to Ramjattan, is that the current generation wants nothing to do with cutting cane.
Since taking the helm of Guyana, the Ali-led Administration has injected billions of dollars to revive the sugar industry. Over $2 billion was sought and approved for reopening the Rose Hall estate.
