Acres of cane under the Guyana Sugar Corporation’s (GuySuCo) field research programme at LBI were recently cleared for housing development.
Fifty hectares of lands at Blairmont, West Coast Berbice, are now being developed to accommodate the varietal field research programme as the lands from which they were removed are no longer owned by the corporation. The move has set back sugar development research for at least a year.
Responding to queries from this newspaper about the programme coming to an end at La Bonne Intention (LBI), GuySuCo Chief Executive Officer Sasenarine Singh said the relocation is a part of GuySuCo’s consolidating and transitional plans.
“I can neither deny nor confirm because I have not visited to see what occurred. I was advised that some were destroyed… but we are working assiduously to get those lands ready but it will take 12 months and more to get to where we were,” Singh explained.
Stabroek News was informed that a portion of the nursery plants from the research programme were recently destroyed when machinery deployed to the area cleared the land. It was reported that the lands were being cleared by the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) in preparation for conversion to housing purposes.
Minister within the Ministry of Housing and Water, Susan Rodrigues, in a recent comment told this newspaper that she was not aware of the operations. She noted that her ministry remains in talks with the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) on the purchasing of the lands.
With sugar production no longer occurring in Demerara, the lands were placed in NICIL’s care and were being transferred to the ministry for housing purposes.
“While it may appear on the surface a harmless casualty of national development by its very actions, the Government department has set the sugar industry back at least 30 years. Editor, it takes the sugar company at least three decades for a new cane variety to be developed. Clearly our policymakers have no appreciation for their decisions, and … turned a deaf ear to the pleas of the sugar company,” stated letter writer, Lilbert Alleyne.
However, Singh stated that the corporation will not be heavily impacted as they have enough plants in their nursery and primary production to cover sugarcane cultivation for the next four to five years.
“…I don’t see what the trouble is because we are bringing the varieties closer to the estates where the operations is. Our core operation remains at Blairmont, Rose Hall and Albion… if there is any cultivation in the varieties it has to be done in those conditions. Scientifically there is nothing wrong being done,” Singh said as he emphasised that the lands are now owned by CH&PA, “and any landlord has a right to occupy their land and that’s all that is happening.”
Asked about the loss of jobs, Singh said no employee will be terminated as he explained that the corporation’s laboratory will remain at LBI and some 18 workers will be integrated into the operations there. One person has agreed to be transferred to Berbice to be a part of the field research programme.
Back in 2020, Over 17,000 varieties of sugarcanes belonging to the GuySuCo’s Agriculture Research Centre were destroyed by squatters who sought to occupy lands at Chateau Margot.
At the time, Head of the Research Centre, Gavin Ramnarain, told Stabroek News “We had some squatters at CM [Chateau Margot] about three weeks. CM 44 field was burnt and we lost 470 varieties of cane, this is devastating enough for anybody who breeds these canes and then two weeks ago and last week, they burnt some more fields and we lost 16,650 varieties of cane”. He added that those
varieties were the only ones in existence and no matter what they try to do, they will never get them back.
Ramnarain had said that the squatting had started in the abandoned lands of the La Bonne Intention Estate but while the estate was shut down, the research centre was still functioning. However, persons began squatting close by and they soon moved to the Success area after which they set their sights on the lands used for breeding. Those persons decided to move over and that was when they claimed those lands after which they set the fields ablaze.
“It’s not necessarily the burning of the fields, it’s the potential data and the 17 years of work. Some of our staff were inconsolable when it comes to crying because you start off working here, all these little babies you grow up got destroyed and that 17 years of work to get back on track and it will not come back,” he bemoaned in 2020, explaining that the sugarcanes that they started breeding in recent years will take years before they reach commercial stage.
