Action committee charges absence of democracy in Rice Producers Association
Chief Executive Officer of the Alesie Group of Companies, Turhane Doerga is taking the government to task over what he says is the undemocratic manner in which the local rice industry is being administered and has told Stabroek Business that the “dictatorial manner” in which the industry is managed could seriously compromise its future at a time when rice is being cited by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a critical commodity in the global response to an impending international food crisis.
According to Doerga the “platform of millers, farmers, consumers, government, exporters and traders” which had been set up under the presidency of the late Dr Cheddi Jagan “to serve as an advisory board to the government in order that the industry could be steered in the right direction, had subsequently been dismantled by his successors. “Hence the current disarray in the industry,” Doerga said.
Doerga’s criticism of what he says is the undemocratic electoral process within the Guyana Rice Producers Association (GRPA) comes on the heels of a move to the courts which he said is aimed at the ‘freeing up” of the rice industry.
Asserting that political control of the GRPA precludes the active participation of some of the key stakeholders in the management of the industry, Doerga told Stabroek Business that the critical starting point for retrieving the industry from what he described as a condition of “chaos” was the involvement of “all the actors in the industry to ensure that you make balanced decisions. You do not do it by appointing ‘yes men’ who will tell you what you want to hear rather than what is happening on the ground,” Doerga says.
And according to Doerga fixing the problem must begin with having “proper” representation in the GRPA and, by extension, in the Guyana Rice Development Board. (GRDB).
A recent press release issued in the name of the Workers and Farmers Action Committee and in which Doerga is named as a “contact person” asserts that “prominent rice farmers and rice millers have confirmed that they have never participated in elections held under the laws that govern the conduct of elections of the GRPA,” which it says was “set up by law in 1946 to represent all rice farmers and rice manufacturers in the country.” The release said that while elections for posts within the GRPA were due to be held by April 30th this year these were “rescheduled to a later date by the current leadership for no good reason.”
Earlier this week an advertisement published in the Stabroek News in the name of the RPA Action Committee said that a “lack of active support” for rice farmers on the part of the government had “caused the rice industry to collapse.” The release listed ten demands including “free and fair elections” within the GRPA under an independent electoral body; the establishment of an intervention fund “to protect and secure the livelihood of rice farmers and the reinstatement of rice export facilities in Georgetown.’ The RAC is also calling for the re-establishment of the Guyana Agricultural Industrial Development Bank “so that farmers can access loans at nearly zero per cent and not at the current commercial rate of 12 to 20 per cent and the duty-free concessions“ equal to the treatment given to the timber and bauxite companies.
Meanwhile, Doerga told Stabroek Business that Alesie had been a victim of instances of harassment by the authorities including an incident during the late 1990s in which the Guyana Rice Board had limited the company to exporting a mere 1,500 tons of rice despite the fact that it had more than 15,000 tons in its silos. He said that the reason given for the decision by the then Head of the GRB was that local millers had to be allowed to secure a share of the market. Doerga said as if that were not enough the authorities subsequently confiscated a vessel on which they said there was cocaine but that they had never proved it. Doerga said that while the confiscated rice ought to have been sold at public auction the authorities choose instead to dispose of the rice in an “underhand” manner. “We never got paid for our rice,” Doerga said.
Doerga told Stabroek Business that these developments had impacted significantly on Alesie’s liquidity and had placed the company in difficulty in terms of meeting its payments to farmers.
Meanwhile, according to Doerga the absence of an independent terminal to facilitate the loading of rice for export is one of the major difficulties facing local exporters. “Rice is one of our major exports and you do not want to see the punishment that we go through to in order to load rice on the wharf”.
Meanwhile, the Alesie Chief Executive Officer criticized the decision to revoke the licence of Mahaicony Rice Mills after the company had fallen into serious arrears in its payments to farmers. He said that the decision took no account of the fact that the company, which, at the time was purchasing around 30 per cent of all of the paddy produced in Guyana had been exporting rice for fifteen years and that the government could have offered to help rather than take action to cause it to cease operations.
Meanwhile, Secretary of the Rice Action Group Jinnah Rahman who Stabroek Business spoke with along with Doerga, said that he was once an activist for the People’s Progressive Party in the GRPA but that he was now collaborating with rice farmers, including Doerga in an effort to bring about the democratization of what he said is “a mechanism for control of rice farmers.” Rahman said that it was his view that rice farmers need to “take back” the GRPA. “The farmers have never been able to give leadership to their organization,” Rahman said.
