Dumb gets dumber

Dear Editor,

I am one of those people who believe that Government reopening of the closed estates is a waste of time and wonton use of taxpayers’ money – a scenario that rightly deserves a referendum to decide.
I would often read any article that seems to suggest otherwise without firstly checking the name of the authors. I was following one such article, captioned: “I strongly believe that sugar still has a great future,” in KN November 7th. The author sought to dispel the views of locally renowned sugar planter, Anthony Vieira, in a SN November 1 letter.

The author wrote: “Some or all the arguments by Mr. Vieira against sugar are really managerial in content and the need to modernize the industry,” and that for sugar, “its best days could well be ahead of it.”
One has to be a fervent believer or a direct benefactor from GuySuCo’s failure to think that the “best days could well be ahead” for sugar after GuySuCo had successively made a loss for over 15 years – surviving at the expense of the taxpayers through Government subsidies.

The author opined: “We are not tapping into all the rich experience that we have available here, mainly highly skilled Guyanese are ‘kicking bricks’.”
What has been stopping GuySuCo from” tapping” into this “highly skilled Guyanese” workforce over the years?

The author sought to dispel Vieira’s concern that too much rainfall is increasing our cost of production, as it affects the cane to meet factory in the recommended 48 hours and it makes the use of mechanical harvesting difficult because of our soft soil conditions…”
Have our yields in tonnes per hectare equaled or better the single crop countries?
The author feels that our factories should be dual purpose to be able to switch from sugar to ethanol quickly as the market prices for the two products rotate.

The author is proposing that management and senior persons be asked to take a salary cut because “we can’t pay the same salaries as when the industry was vibrant.”
Really? What year was the industry vibrant or making a profit?
At this point, I could have seen the end of the missive. Lo and behold! The author is Donald Ramotar – a former president and member of GuySucC’s board of directors who was pictured sleeping at a board meeting.

I wonder where were all these ideas when he had a chance to make a difference or do us humans simply feel that we get wiser with age?
How do we envision a GuySuCo in loss-making mode retooling its aging factories to switch from sugar to ethanol quickly?

“Engineering solutions” to harvest the cane, if successful, will take away the jobs from 80 percent of the workforce – defeating the primary objective (job creation) of reopening the industry.
I now believe Donald was sincere in his promise to spend $20B to mechanize the sugar industry to supporters at Whim in his 2015 campaign.
He couldn’t figure mechanization was going to put thousands of them out of jobs. The supporters were dumb enough to cheer him. Dumb gets dumber!

Rudolph Singh