Even with this excellent weather GuySuCo will not produce 250,000 tons this year

Dear Editor,

Recently I saw in the media the Minister of Agriculture making a declaration that GuySuCo has surpassed its revised [down] target for the year and that there was much to celebrate.

This is the same minister who failed us in the health sector as minister and a recent example of this incompetence is having been shot in the buttocks 12 days before, a Canadian man suddenly and inexplicably died at the GPHC on Friday.

I will not even go into the circumstances of the unexplained deaths that occur in this country daily during even a simple child birth at hospitals. I remember as manager of Versailles our nurse midwife of the estate delivering babies at a nearly 100 per cent successful rate at the homes of the workers.

We have had one of the driest second half of the year periods in recent history with virtually no rainfall since July. To make a declaration that the industry is turning around is ridiculous and deceitful, to claim that there has been an improvement in the infrastructure of GuySuCo contributing to this improvement in performance of the industry is premature, the reality is that Skeldon is producing far below the 100,000 tons a year mark set by the industry since 1998, and the industry even with this excellent dry weather will not produce 250,000 tons this year when we were told by the 1998 to 2008 GuySuCo strategic plan that the industry would be producing 400,000 tons by 2008.

A few heavy showers, which is the norm in this country, when it comes, will again expose the tenuous situation of the Sugar Industry brought on by incompetence and cronyism in the management of the industry by the PPP.

Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira