I last worked in the Guyana Sugar Industry in 1999 – though I continued in sugar as CEO of the Sugar Association of the Caribbean until 2007 – so I do not pretend to understand Guysuco’s current challenges and have no intention of second-guessing the executives now tackling its challenges.
Of course, having worked in the industry for so long, I am distressed at its present state. I believe my recollections of the industry should be entered into the historical record.
I came to Guyana and worked in the sugar industry in the mid-1950s. I experienced a sugar industry being transformed by the “Jock Campbell Revolution “. It was a wonderful time of change and new ideas and betterment. I remember going to work every day looking forward to the work to be done and the promise of improvements.
Jock Campbell had first visited Guyana in the 1930’s and seen the industry at its lowest ebb and suffering from a combination of inadequate sugar market prices and moribund management. His family company (Curtis Campbell) had amalgamated with the much larger Bookers in 1939 but the immediate outbreak of WW2 prevented any relevant contact between London and Georgetown. The illness from 1944 of the Booker Chairman propelled Jock into the leadership position and exposed the chaotic state of the business with a clear alternative choice of selling the company or squeezing costs to achieve an exit. Fortunately he recognized the enormous social obligation he had inherited with the wide mix of Booker companies employing 30 000 people and being the major visible means of support for the country. He therefore determined to get it right and over the next few years transformed the company at all levels in both the UK and Guyana with a strong emphasis on youth and convincing local people that they had a real chance of rapid promotion. Imported expatriates were required to be top grade in their function and to commit fully to speedy transformation especially through training and fast promotion of promising junior staff. The relationship with Guyana society was also transformed by insisting that time be invested in getting to know people – the teachers, intellectuals, junior civil servants and even radical politicians with whom Jock Campbell developed cordial personal friendships if not full policy agreement.
He recognized that pious hope was not enough and an adequate price for export sugar was crucial to allow investment in an urgently needed improvement of the factories and complex agricultural infrastructure of Guyana. He led the negotiations with the British Government which led to the creation of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement with a reasonably remunerative price. Attached to this was the provision for Special Funds to support rehabilitation of industry assets and also to support a rapid investment in improved living conditions on the sugar estates. He had been complicit in discussions with Sir Sydney Caine of the Colonial Office /Treasury on the creation of the Special Funds during the War but deferring payment until peacetime and integrating it into the CSA. The impact of all these changes was immense for the industry and Guyana as a nation and it is not too dramatic to refer to the outcome owing its financial health and exceptional technical efficiency and social transformation to “Jock Campbell’s Revolution.”
From all this everything changed for the better:
The marketing of sugar was immensely improved first through the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement in 1951 and subsequently after the UK joined the European Common Market the EU Sugar Protocol. Both were long term political commitments with much better and more stable prices giving rise to better wages and conditions and financial returns for company and country.
Workers in the industry were hugely better off — higher wages, better conditions, 45 new housing schemes with roads and water supply, getting rid of the logies, much better medical facilities, welfare facilities and sporting activities greatly extended.
Factories were re-equipped and modernised and expanded, field equipment renewed, field practices and cane and sugar yields immensely improved through scientific agricultural applications, the transport of cane and sugar revolutionised, the bulk-loading plant at DST replaced loading and shipping sugar in bags and gave Guyana by far the best and most modern bulk-loading plant in the West Indies.
As a result of this comprehensive transformation, production increased by leaps and bounds to 370,000 tonnes, if I remember right, in 1968 with confident prospects of 500,000 tonnes in a few years. It was a time of great achievement and great optimism.
The new US market was fully supplied; special sugars were developed; Caribbean market successfully targeted; and the flourishing rum industry and export trade also fully supplied with its basic raw material, molasses, with a big surplus left to help bolster export earnings.
All this time a programme of Guyanisation was taking place at a rapid pace through recruitment practices, the Booker Cadet Scheme, much stepped up training programmes and a general policy of “a Guyanese industry must be run by Guyanese “. The number of expatriates was steadily and greatly reduced. Outstanding Guyanese Mike Glasford, Vibert Yong-Kong, Earl John, Nowrang Persaud, Josh Ragnauth, Fitz McLean, Harold Davis Jr., Bigyan Chandra, Lawrence Stewart and scores of others increasingly assisted in transforming and expanding the industry until it led Caricom by a far distance.
This was accompanied by the application of a policy of getting Guyanese in the industry better trained. The Port Mourant Apprentice Training Centre was world-class and turned out hundreds ( thousands over the years!) of craftsmen — very many of which, as is well known , found employment and made great careers not only in the sugar industry or, indeed, even in Guyana !
There was so much more that was good going on. The Community Centres provided expanding programmes of welfare services and development of skills and organisation of sports. Clyde Walcott came in and revolutionised cricket as is well known — and McDonald Bailey did the same for running. The Community Centres with their Estate Welfare Officers and Personnel Managers were vibrant and revitalising agents.
It was an exciting time to be working in an industry where people really were “more important than ships, shops and sugar estates
