Sustainability of the Sugar Industry – 2019 and beyond

Dear Editor,

‘The most sustainable sugar industry in the English–speaking Caribbean’
Sugar producers in the English –speaking Caribbean are:
Jamaica
Belize
Barbados
Guyana
It is to be noted that for some extended time now, major sugar production ceased in:
Antigua
St Kitts Nevis
Trinidad Tobago
But Guyana has never operated just as an industry, for its management long accepted responsibility for, amongst others, the following deliverables:

– a comprehensive community development programme which saw the development of at least 11,000 house lots in what were called Extra Nuclear Areas, that later became members of the Local Government System. The lots were eventually sold to the beneficiary employees at $1 each.

– the construction and management of Community Centres and Girls’ Clubs which accommodated sports, educational and cultural programmes, coordinated by Estate Welfare Officers (male and female), of every estate;
– the organisation of funding the construction of and/or repairing to worker houses through interest–free loans (initially repayable over a twenty year period) from the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund–subscribed through a legal Sugar Welfare Levy on every ton of sugar exported;
– The voluntary provision of free medical services to:
a) all employees
b) their spouses; and
c) unemployed children up to age eighteen years
d) all pensioners

At the end of 2017 there were some 17,000 employees and 5,235 pensioners who benefited.
Before Wales Estate was closed, the industry’s health services were provided by: six (6) Estate Medical Officers and twenty-nine (29) para-medicals (nurses, midwives, pharmacists) operating in fifteen (15) Primary Health Care Centres and two (2) Regional Diagnostic Centres.

Arguably also, the industry must be the largest subscriber to the National Insurance Scheme, one which is complemented by the first contributory medical scheme established in this country, beginning from 1964. Membership ranges from managers to weekly paid workers, who could also access overseas treatment.

Our sugar industry’s contribution to education is unmatched by any counterparts in the Caribbean, beginning with the very expansive Cadet graduate programme aimed at replacing all 350 expatriate Booker employees, beginning from 1956.

The scheme still obtains to cater for more current human resources needs. The investment in education and training at the University of Guyana and the Guyana School of Agriculture remains consistent. The previous five years up to 2017 saw substantial millions spent at these levels – complemented by costly annual bursary awards to workers’ children; as well as an Assistance To Study Scheme.

There has never been an industry in the Caribbean (in any language) which could have matched the residential Apprentices Training Centre established at Port Mourant, Corentyne, by Bookers Sugar Estates in 1957, whose early graduates were certified by City & Guilds Institute of London, United Kingdom. Tradesmen included:
• Fitter Machinist
• Agriculture Mechanic
• Electrician
• Auto Electrician
• Instrument Repair Mechanic and
• Sugar Boilers

These skills are still catered for; but sadly the Centre has not adjusted to training in more recent technologies, as the factories still rely on the decades-old equipment.

So while the costs of all the above are included in the total cost of production in Guyana’s sugar industry, Caribbean counterparts have had minimal comparable financial responsibility.

Nevertheless, it is worth confirming that several sugar producers have had to opt out of producing a ‘sweet’ that, for health reasons, is increasingly less recommended for consumption – in the form of soft drinks, for example.
In the meantime, with decreasing production and productivity in field and factory, there continues this indulgence in a fantasy that the Industry could be profitably sustained when there are three operational units that are all desperately in need of technical upgrading in the first instance; but more critically of human skills.

The depletion of the latter has been ongoing for at least a decade, and is compounded by the scarcity of leadership at several levels of the job hierarchy. Incidentally no one refers to the elephant at Skeldon.

A major lack of incentive towards achieving the expectations of policy-makers, is that there has been absolutely no increase in compensation throughout the whole of the sugar industry since 2014 – a situation which contrasts, at least contemplatively, with the largesse awarded to the suspect value of outputs from public servants.

How is the worth of one measured against that of the other? Accountants would rightfully ask to see the balance sheet. So that to whatever prospective the parties speak, there is this underlying self-deception about the now and future realities of the sugar industry.

Incidentally, it is worth noting that none of the sugar industries in the Caribbean would have had a record of what is mis-named ‘industrial relations’ as disruptive of ours. The following is just a sample of our superior record over five years.

So that when some, however glibly, would argue that the industry is already in a ‘ditch’, little would they have known that up to 2017 the industry was spending something like $1.2 billion annually on drainage and irrigation for the benefit of both estates and surrounding communities.

So in the final analysis which ‘difference’ is going to dig the industry out of its dilemma of sustainability?
E.B. John