By Tracey Khan – Drakes
[www.inewsguyana.com] – The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) has remained silent as to whether it will honour calls made by the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) and NAACIE for an inquiry into the operations of the sugar industry following the second lowest production in 24 years.
The Unions had stated that the annual national budgetary subventions are not stopping the hemorrhaging at GuySuCo.
President of GAWU, Komal Chand told iNews on Friday, January 30 during a telephone interview that since the call was made for an inquiry, no response has been forthcoming from the sugar corporation.
“We haven’t heard anything from them, they haven’t made any disclosure public or directly to us,” Chand said.
The call for inquiry was made by the Union over a month ago, according to Chand.
The GAWU President was reluctant to say whether he was disappointed in the lack of communication on GuySuCo’s part.
iNews made contact with Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo, Raj Singh on Thursday, January 29, who promised to return a call in relation to the issue.
However, Singh did not respond and calls made to his cell phone by iNews afterwards went unanswered.
Additionally, efforts by this news entity to make contact with Minister of Agriculture, Dr Leslie Ramsammy proved futile.
Meanwhile, NAACIE had also stated that the tax payers are being exploited and that a national expert and impartial inquiry must be mounted now to rescue the industry.
Recapping the reason for their call, Chand explained that, “the sugar industry needs to upgrade and improve its production and that is one of the problems to get maximum yield from quality care, in other words you must improve on the quality of the cane and quantity of your production.”
GuySuCo has been affected by falling production, high debt and a series of problems at its flagship Skeldon estate.
NAACIE blamed the Corporation of “senseless pre-harvesting of pre-ripened cane causing poor quality production also compromising quality and production potential of the 2015 first crop.”
