Amidst mounting doubts over the fate of the East Demerara Sugar Estate, GuySuCo says that the poor turnout of cane harvesters is greatly affecting whether there will be sufficient land to plant at the next crop.
“At the moment, we are harvesting and we are having a major challenge as it relates to harvesting and attendance. We are now in the sixth week for the crop and our attendance has been 54.5% in the first week, 44% in the second week, 63.25% in the third week, 54.6% in the fourth week, 60.6% in the fifth week and 63.3% in the sixth week at East Demerara,” a spokesperson, who did not want to be named, explained. It was noted that GuySuCo has only been able to harvest some 21,000 tonnes for the current crop, if it had a larger turnout it might have been able to harvest some 10,000 tonnes more.
“If we can’t take off the crop then we won’t have sufficient lands available to plant. We haven’t been getting the turnout at a satisfactory percentage [70% to 75%]. If we have that across the industry, we would be able to take off the crop and do our plumbing and planting in a timely manner. One thing leads to another,” the spokesperson related.
