Dear Editor,
For some time now I have been waiting to see if we are going to take a genuine interest in the GuySuCo problem. There has been quite a bit of interest, but mostly it has just been sniping in the dark and not hitting the target much. When it comes to sugar, I have written on it numerous times since the ʼ70s, and I have never been wrong, and in fact in a letter you published many years ago, I told Ravi Dev that the answer to GuySuCo’s problem was aquaculture. Nearly 30 years ago I gave them the answer for Guyana!
Is the management of GuySuCo incompetent? The answer is yes. Every document GuySuCo itself publishes laments the loss of skills and quality of work in the industry. And it has been established over and over again that deficient managers and executive directions have led to disasters in the corporation. The conversion of the LBI/Enmore lands to be mechanically friendly was a disaster, because it sought a solution which only slightly addressed the existing problem, ie they removed a 36 ft cambered bed and replaced it with a 90 ft cambered bed, which ended up as a bigger problem, since not only did it not work for mechanization, it yielded less cane than before, since planting along the bed was a ridiculous concept. But GuySuCo still pursues this disastrous path since according to their website, “On the newly introduced wide-bed, ridge and furrow layout, chopper harvesters are used for mechanical operations. The Skeldon estate has been the driver in this exercise.” If this was true there would be no need to close LBI/Enmore now, since more than 80% of it has been converted to this wide bed with disastrous results, since we are told that we have to close the estate. I predicted it nearly a decade ago. The slant of these wide beds is not mechanical harvester friendly, and Mr Renger Van Dijk of Genequip told me that at Skeldon a John Deere harvester he checked was using 75% of its power just to walk along the slant at the side of the wide bed. As recently as July 19, 2014 Kaieteur News published an article which informs the public that in my opinion the wide-bed conversion is costly and will be ineffective, and will sink the industry further. Nevertheless these people are still publishing this nonsense of innovative wide beds on their website.
Despite the rhetoric of the executives of GuySuCo, this is the first time we are going to completely close a sugar estate without the canes being allocated to go somewhere else; in other words it is a total closure. In the case of Wales, for example, we closed the Wales factory but at the same time GuySuCo offered the workers of Wales alternative work at Uitvlugt and (even though it was not properly verbalized by the GuySuCo PR department) the message was clear, if those Wales workers refused to take up work at Uitvlugt, we will be forced to close Uitvlugt in just a few years.
Rose Hall, we are told is a disaster, but it is sandwiched between Albion and Blairmont, both of which, we are told, are doing OK. One has to ask why, but it is known that management deficiencies destroyed Rose Hall, and we know that incompetent management is normal in the industry. GuySuCo itself has in fact said so, officially and unofficially, on numerous occasions that due to migration, shortage of staff, lack of training, etc, their staff are not competent to carry out the affairs of the corporation.
If GuySuCo says that their staff are not competent to carry on the established business of a 300-year-old agricultural enterprise with the historical experience and accumulated knowledge which that brings, how can they tell the public that the same incompetent managers and executives will now be capable of diversifying it efficiently to something entirely new? And this is not speculation since the management of Skeldon and Rose Hall are presently heading a taskforce appointed by GuySuCo to diversify those two estates.
I do not believe that the CEO of GuySuCo, Errol Hanoman, is best suited to lead the diversification of the corporation and indeed to see it through this
dangerous period for sugar. He is an accountant and therefore not best placed to transition from one agricultural industry to another. He has no vision for agriculture, and is primarily concerned about what something will cost, so that the right thing to do is not always done if it is seen as too expensive. It is better to do nothing in view of the cash-strapped nature of the company than do the wrong thing.
Mr Hanoman insists that his staff can diversify GuySuCo, but they can’t. In addition, he holds too many unnecessary meetings; he is a micro-manager but has no hands-on experience in factory or field which makes a bad situation worse. His staff sits in meetings in offices more than they supervise on the job; this is an old sickness of GuySuCo. It reminds one of Ian McDonald’s ‘Ian on Sunday’ column about organizations which have meetings to decide when to have meetings. I have seen it firsthand, and it is true.
I resigned my position at GuySuCo since I do not want to be associated with disaster. Also the fact is that I have never been a hypocrite and cannot just start to praise a system which is unworthy of praise, and nothing has been done to make me change my mind that GuySuCo is still a very inefficient and incompetent organization. Just because they are paying me will not make me see it any other way, and so refusing to accept the situation, the executive found me as difficult to work with, as I did them.
In fact for the changes which must come soon, I think that Paul Bhim would make a better CEO for GuySuCo today, since he is far more open to suggestions and new concepts. Long ago I wrote that he was removed as CEO by the PPP because he had the guts to say that there was “no cane in the fields,” which he inherited. In other words the man is not a hypocrite, whatever else he might be, and he understands the current financial situation at GuySuCo.
Years ago when GuySuco had a dairy farm at Versailles they brought an expert from the US to advise them, since it was not economical. In driving him around the farm, he asked if they were not afraid to have all of the people he was seeing walking around the farm; he was then told that they were workers. He then asked how many workers they had and was told over 100, and he responded that a farm of that size in the US would employ 7 or 8 people. It’s happening again. Three times before they attempted to diversify GuySuCo and failed, and they will fail again. In fact they already have.
If we agree that GuySuCo cannot diversify GuySuCo, we are left with a new organization which will do it, and the sooner we do it the better. I know that the PPP and the union are salivating at what I am writing here, but frankly it is my opinion that the union and the PPP helped in no small way to create this problem, and are not part of the solution; any new entity should not start off with the massive handicaps this will perpetrate. I also want to say that since December 2016 I was convinced that Aquasol was the wrong consultant for us. They do not understand our conditions, and are nearly a year late with the feasibility study. Actually there is no indication that we will see it soon. It is another reason why I resigned, I won’t be able to work with them. I am predicting now that even though aquaculture will be an excellent diversification for GuySuCo, the way it is being approached will lead to failure. Recently Christopher Ram asked me on ‘Plain Talk’ if I would like to explain myself to the Economic Services Committee of the Parliament and I said that I would welcome it.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
