Your Eyewitness was quite chuffed to hear – well, actually “READ”, if you want to be a pedant! – that those 500 workers from Enmore will be employed in the shuttered Sugar Packaging Plant that’ll be converted into a machining facility for the O&G industry!! This is great news from any number of fronts. First and foremost, most of the workers would probably be coming from the shuttered sugar factories of Enmore and LBI. They would’ve at least been exposed to a factory environment – dealing with heavy-duty machinery and also lathes and other fabrication machines that are standard in any sugar factory.
Already, the great Booker Apprenticeship School at Port Mourant, which sent out thousands of technically proficient mechanics, machinists, electricians etc since 1955, has been converted (partially?) to an O&G Technical School. We must recognise that we gotta use our (limited) presence in the manufacturing sector – along with the newer burgeoning one in the O&G local content-driven arena – to catapult us out of the primary production of commodities, like sugar. The higher value imparted would lead to higher salaries and improved living conditions for our workers.
Now, this doesn’t mean that we MUST give up on our sugar industry. It’s all about opportunity costs, baby!! And no one has ever seen going into the cane fields as an “opportunity” for a veeery long time!! Let’s not even begin to talk about the social conditions that are imposed in those fields. While there aren’t any longer drivers with whips, the miserable wages to cut and load cane are much more effective, since the poor workers are pushing themselves – leading to endemic rum drinking to dull the pain, since nobody writes their stories. Just read about coal miners from DH Lawrence and you’ll get an idea of what brutal labour can do to human beings.
But let’s face it, labour’s still the most expensive input into that industry, since the days of slavery and Indentureship. And no matter how much mechanisation we introduce, we’ll always be driven by the logic of marginal unit production costs, where we will never be winners. This is especially true for Enmore/LBI, where there are so many other opportunities for labourers and skilled workmen. The construction boom on the East Coast Demerara will haul off most of the field workers who were laid off by the PNC back in 2017. And once they’ve seen the bright lights of working in construction, there’s no way we’re gonna get them back in the cane fields!!
Let’s see what happens over in Berbice, as CGX crank up their drilling in the Corentyne Oil Block and construction of their Deep-water Harbour near the Berbice Bridge!
…with governing
Over in Barbados, Mia Mottley won all 30 seats in their Parliament. And nobody’s complaining about “lack of an Opposition”!! The point is: in a democracy, the people are aware of the rules of the political game, and political parties go into elections fully aware of the implications of those rules. Back in 2011, the PNC/APNU and the AFC collectively garnered one seat more that the PPP – but they didn’t get the Presidency, which controls the Executive, because of our rules.
Nobody, including the PNC and AFC, complained!! They followed the rules, coalesced BEFORE the elections, got the same number of seats in 2015, and then formed the Government!! The PPP didn’t complain, but went into the Opposition and planned their strategy for the next elections. But after they won the 2020 elections, the PNC’s been stamping its feet and complaining that “they’re not being involved in Government”!
Well, were any rules changed since 2015? If the Opposition powers were good for the PPP then, why aren’t they good for the PNC now??
…after the O&G Conference
Your Eyewitness didn’t attend the O&G Conference, even though it was a bargain! But yesterday, which was free, couldn’t they have retained the duty-free rules? He so wanted that Grey Goose!!
