Dear Editor,
Since taking office almost four months ago, the PPP/C Government has been moving ahead with its plans to re-open three of the four sugar estates shuttered by the coalition government. The process has already begun with the rehiring of almost 700 employees to carry out preliminary work on the sugar factories in preparation for the grand reopening in 2022.
The closing of the sugar factories three years ago has resulted in major damage to machinery and the factories and there was no tractor on site on some of these estates as NICIL operators carried out a great plunder between 2017 and 2020 on these estates. Key equipment have vanished from the factories.
In addition, the cane lands have been left abandoned and are teeming with bushes which need to be cleared, tilled and planted but one cannot plant sugar cane with their finger nails, but powerful ploughing implements to be pulled by powerful 200 HP tractors like the articulated tractors to get the job done. As a result, the burden is now on the State-owned entity and its CEO to get the machinery back in working condition and to purchase the suitable tractors required to till the land in preparation for planting and hence for the reopening of the factories. The process of acquiring 44 articulated tractors is underway at a cost of some $1.2 billion (not the sorts of inflated figures as reporting in some media outlets). It has come to my attention that the first six tractors would cost about $26 million each and each one of them is over 200 HP and are articulated sugar-specific tractors rather than the generalist agriculture rice or fixed frame tractors that have consistently failed the tillage programme of GuySuCo.
While some inside of GuySuCo and others in the public have opined that the tractors are too expensive, the truth is, the articulated tractors are “sugar-specific tractors” which means that they are tailored to the specific needs of the sugar industry. They are different from the fixed frame and the crawler tractors. The articulated tractors are very flexible and they are powered on all their four wheels. Because real mechanical power is in all four wheels, these articulated tractors function much easier on the sugar cane fields. In the final analysis, they are most suitable for the sugar-cane industry to enhance yield and meet production targets and this has been proven empirically both at GuySuCo and in the universities in the United States.
That said, it is extremely important for the public and for those opposed to the purchasing of the articulated tractors to know that during the 1970s when Harold Davis, Sr. was the CEO of GuySuCo, the production of sugar was at its peak because the articulated tractors were used to till the land. However, in 2009, there was a substantial decrease in the production of sugar due to the fact that the State-owned Corporation switched from using articulated tractors to the fixed frame tractors. It was a colossal mistake to say the least that had cost the nation billions of dollars.
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Asquith Rose
