Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 15, 2012 News
…says weather influenced factory location
President Donald Ramotar has said that he is optimistic that the problems at the Skeldon Sugar Factory will be corrected very shortly.
He was speaking to graduates of the Port Mourant GuySuCo Training school and senior officials within the sugar industry, recently.
Mr. Ramotar said that he was speaking with Dr. Raj Singh and that the government is working along with the Bosch Company, a South African firm, to “correct all the faults hopefully, within a year’s time. We can correct all the faults and the factory can produce as we had anticipated at the very beginning and realise its full potential.”
The South African firm is looking to design the modifications of three main aspects of the factory, the GuySuCo CEO told Kaieteur News. He said these are the bagasse plow (the feeder system, that leads to the boiler), the conveyor system and the condensate tank.
The Guyanese leader also said that the government chose the location to build the New Skeldon Modernisation Factory at Skeldon, Berbice because of the weather patterns.
He noted his uncertainty if the statistics would show the same information today. “We chose Skeldon, because when we looked at the statistics— I don’t know if the statistics will show the same thing now— and if we were taking the decision now (to build a new factory in Skeldon), whether we would have chosen Skeldon.
“But back then when we looked at the statistics, we saw that Skeldon was the driest estate in the whole country and as far as rainfall was concerned, it had the least rainfall and therefore, had the best possibilities of growing sugar and to put a new factory there”.
Ramotar said that today he understands that “rain tearing skin at Skeldon these days.”
Mr. Ramotar admitted that the factory “hasn’t turned out exactly how we thought, but we think we will get there very soon; I hope, very very soon we will get there”.
The estate was commissioned at a cost of US$181 million in August 2009, and was hailed as the boon to the survival of the sugar industry.
However, the factory has been plagued by numerous problems and has not been able to function as was intended.
Dr. Ramsammy said that the plan to fix most of the design flaws of the factory started this out of crop period and is expected to be completed by the first crop in 2013.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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