President Irfaan Ali on Tuesday offered the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) an opportunity to run one of the remaining sugar estates of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO), at a time when he continues to be disappointed about falling production.
Referring to GAWU President, Seepaul Narine, who is also a governing ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP) parliamentarian, the Guyanese leader told an Enmore Martyr’s Day remembrance wreath-laying ceremony that the union should get involved in running one of the estates, “We also invited the union if you would like to take up the mantle of management and to take one of the estates and make it a model. We give you that challenge openly to take one of the estates and to manage it,” he said.
Dr Ali said that was one of way of examining different models. “Do not shy away from the opportunity. We are here to work with you,” he said. Defending the spending of billions of dollars on GUYSUCO, he said if government had not done so, the industry would have been dead. The President vowed that government would continue to support the sugar sector, even as government was searching for different formulas to “ensure the long-term survival of the industry.” Among the steps, he said, to address the acute shortage of labour is mechanised cane harvesting. He said up to 44 percent of the lands have been converted to use machines.
Vehicles were being replaced by drones to inspect fields and apply fertiliser to cut time and money, he said. “The modernisation of the sugar industry is necessary for its survival, resilience and sustainability,” he said.
Despite repeated threats by Dr Ali to fire officials of the wholly State-owned loss-making and highly indebted entity, no one has been sent home.
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