Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 22, 2016 Letters
Dear Editor,
Like me, most Guyanese, here and abroad, must have been shocked when they open the newspapers and read that Wales Estate will be closed at the end of this year. I was equally saddened when I read the comments by residents of this estate’s community by a section of the media captioned “Wales residents say will be badly hit by the sugar estate closure”. The full extent of this closure is not properly felt yet; it’s when they will actually be unemployed that the full impact will be felt. Time will tell.
The Ministry of Agriculture in its statement contended that “it was impossible to make sugar at Wales viable”, and that closing the estate would allow improvements to be carried on the better performing estates”. I disagree that “it’s impossible to make sugar at Wales viable”, since this estate was one of the “better performing estates” not too long ago. The current poor performance of the estate is due primarily to poor management at the estate and head office levels in the past 7 years. Agriculture operations and research and development units at head office have failed to sustain the high level of production and productivity that prevailed on this estate in the era of 1991 to 2008, as will be illustrated below.
Between the periods of 1991 – 2004, an era when Booker Tate managed the industry, sugar production appreciated considerably each year. The average sugar production in this era for Wales was 24,638 tonnes per year, of which Farmers contributed an average 7,746 each year or 31% of the total estate’s production. Cane yield and land productivity was 65 tonnes cane per hectare and 5.54 tonnes sugar per hectare, respectively. After 2004 sugar production precipitously declined on all estates each year to present time.
Between the periods 1991 – 2008, the full era of Booker Tate, average annual sugar production for Wales was 24, 932 tonnes, with farmers contributing 7,733 tonnes. Cane yield and land productivity was 68 tonnes cane per hectare and 5.69 tonnes sugar per hectare, respectively. Despite production declining on all estates from 2005 – 2008, Wales consistently sustained a high performance.
Between the periods 2009 – 2015, under local management, the average sugar production for the estate is 20,709 tonnes and cane yield is 47 tonnes cane per hectare; a decline of almost 4,000 tonnes sugar per year and a drop in yield of 18 tonnes cane per hectare. Herein lies the problem. Farmers’ contribution rose from 31% to 50-52% as result of poor cane yield and low land productivity on the estate. For all the years, unlike the other estates, Wales enjoyed a stable and least disruptive workforce.
Editor, I make this analysis to illustrate that Wales has demonstrated over the years as being a consistently “better performing estate”, but it has suffered immensely through mismanagement of the agriculture operations that has now led to its peril, where close to 1,800 sugar workers will have to be severed from employment. It is unthinkable what will be the fate of these workers and their families, and not forgetting the many small and medium businesses that line the pathways from Sisters Village to Free-and-Easy whose main source of sales are from sugar workers.
It’s incomprehensible how the closing down of Wales will “allow improvements to be carried out on the better performing estates”. If cost, profitability and viability of operations are to determine what is better in the context of prudent business management, then there are no “better performing estates” in GuySuCo. The recently-concluded Commission of Inquiry on the sugar industry revealed that in 2015, the company projected a loss of G$15 billion, in 2014 it suffered a G$17.4 billion loss, and the average for the period 2009 – 2015 was a whopping G$10 billion per year. Therefore, despite how the estates maybe be deemed now to be “better performing estates” each one of them made huge losses for the past 7 years. There was no cross-subsidization of costs from any of the estates to subsidize the financing of Wales, so how its closure will “allow improvements to be carried out on the better performing estates”?
In the Ministry’s statement it further states that workers will be absorbed at Uitvlugt Estate, a worst performing estate within the last 5 years. Production on this estate has declined by almost 42% in the last 7 years relative to what obtained in the period 1991-2008. The estate’s current manpower establishment is superfluous to its needs; it has reached saturation point, as such moving workers from Wales to Uitvlugt is a no-no for a starter.
The statement further states that farmers will be moving their canes to Uitvlugt. Anyone with even the faintest knowledge of cane farming at Wales will tell you that it’s a ridiculous proposition. Farmers are already receiving a low price for the canes that they supply to the company, and the huge cost to move their canes by tractor-drawn cane carts to Uitvlugt which is some 25-30 miles away will drain their last financial reserve to the point of churning out massive losses. Inevitably, they will be forced out of cane farming business. Operationally, Uitvlugt has a punt dumper, not hoist, which means that canes transported by cane carts will have to be off-loaded in punts to be taken into the factory. Who will pay for the double handling of the canes, or has this been factored when it was decided to have the farmers sending their canes to Uitvlugt?
Editor, the decision to close Wales Estate and having to sever close to 1,800 workers must be attributed to neglect and mismanagement, and the ownership of this massive national tragedy points in the direction of all those who would have adjudicated in the agriculture management and control of the sugar industry from 2009 to date.
Rajendra Parmanand
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