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Broke GuySuco proposing fat salary, perks for new boss – Dr. Roopnaraine
– APNU MP says Skeldon Sugar Project is an extravagant disaster
The cash-strapped Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) is actively considering appointing its absentee chairman, Raj Singh, to head the Corporation for the sum of US$25,000 (G$5M) per month, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine has claimed.
But it is a claim the government quickly scrambled to dismiss.
APNU MP, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine
Roopnaraine is the spokesperson on agriculture for APNU, the largest opposition bloc in Parliament.
Further to the “princely” salary, Roopnaraine claimed that the government was also considering adding to the package two houses for Singh plus uncapped perks.
“How does the Minister expect this largesse to be greeted by the already demoralised managers and restive workers across the Corporation?” Roopnaraine asked.
But Parliamentarian for the ruling PPP, Bibi Shadick, denied the claims made by Roopnaraine.
The APNU MP’s shocking claims were contained in his contribution to the budget debate, in which he said that the sugar Corporation is “mired in these financial doldrums.” Further, he painted a bitter picture of the state of the sugar industry. He spoke of low labour turnout on all the estates.
Roopnaraine said that the desertion of the canefields by the workers meant that the factories were standing idle fifty percent of the time during the crops, waiting for the cane that never came.
This must also have meant that during a substantial part of this time the factory workers had to be paid for idling as the factory idled.
“This migration away from the industry is not a new phenomenon. It has been continuing steadily since 2000 and has now reached crisis proportions,” Roopnaraine stated.
He said that between 2006 and 2012, Guyana collected compensation payments from the EU of $24.7 billion.
“Why should GuySuCo be in such a near terminal condition?” he asked.
The new Skeldon Factory, hailed by the government as a boon to the survival of the sugar industry, remains a basket case.
“A factory that was designed to operate efficiently at 350 tons an hour is hobbling along at the rate of 196 tons cane an hour,” Roopnaraine stated.
As further evidence of its woes, he said the grinding time lost for mechanical reasons at this spanking new state-of-the-art factory was 550.51 hours, accounting for over 25% of the time lost at all the other estate factories for the entire year 2012 – 2130.55 hours.
The total industry production for 2012 was 218,069 tons, the lowest in over two decades.
At Skeldon, production was a total of 33,309 tons of sugar, not the 100,000 tons projected.
“The bitter pill has to be swallowed: the Skeldon Sugar Modernisation Project [SSMP] is an extravagant disaster,” Roopnaraine stated.
Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy said that while it has not performed as expected, the Skeldon Factory is already showing its potential and will be able to meet its targets by 2016.
“The truth is there is a silver lining and we will succeed in reaching our goal and sustaining production at over 400,000 tons per year,” he stated.
Ramsammy said the success of sugar in the future has nothing to do with the gloom and doom of the enemies of the industry, but it depends on those persons who toil day by day in the sugar industry, the employees of GuySuCo.
“In these difficult times, when challenges seem more than opportunities some may feel the need to savagely attack our efforts. But the workers and managers have been sticking to the task at hand – reconfiguration of the industry for another century of leading the economic growth of Guyana,” he stated.
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