Sugar museum in the works

The Ministry of Agriculture plans to establish a sugar museum, as part of its efforts to recapture and preserve the history surrounding the transformation of the sugar industry.

Minister of Agriculture Dr Leslie Ramsammy made this announcement on a programme hosted on the Budget 2012 implementation on NCN Channel 11 over the weekend.

“Sugar has always been one of the pillars in our development… it’s not only part of our development, it’s part of us, what we are as a country today,” Ramsammy said, according to the Government Information Agency (GINA). The ministry will be seeking expertise from the Ministry of Culture and the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) to help establish the museum.

“Sugar cultivation was first introduced into Guyana in the 1630s, and the scale of its planting expanded rapidly from the second half of the seventeenth century onward,” GINA said. The sugar industry remains the largest single employer in the country with an estimated 20,000-strong workforce.