Vice Chairman of the Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Anthony Vieira has resigned from the board of the company. However, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sasenarine Singh has said that he was not surprised by the move and has denied claims of collusion or deception when it comes to a field test for tractors before they were procured.
According to Vieira in a letter to the editor, his resignation came because he was not happy with the direction in which GuySuCo was going. He wrote that GuySuCo wanted to buy 22 articulated tractors, which he did not agree with. Vieira said he had wanted the Corporation to continue using John Deere fixed-frame tractors.
“We, therefore, objected to it and the matter went to the President. The President instructed that we should only buy two and do a trial adjudicated by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the two machines were bought and the trial was done at Albion,” Vieira wrote.
He claimed that at the trial, no representatives from John Deere nor members of the Board, including himself, were present. He also claimed that during the test, a two-year-old John Deere machine was put to compete with a brand-new articulated tractor. He cited these, and other factors, in his decision to quit.
Meanwhile, the GuySuCo CEO, when contacted, was nonplussed by Vieira’s resignation. He also denied the former Vice Chairman’s claims, noting that in the case of the field test the top officials at GuySuCo were supposed to be absent. He noted that the test was done by independent engineers.
Vieira was appointed Director of Field Operations at GuySuCo back in 2016. The Board is chaired by Pravinchandra Dave, who is also the CEO of Demerara Bank Limited.
