Dear Editor,
Vice President, Minister of Public Security and AFC Chairman, Khemraj Ramjattan is quoted on the December 08, 2017, as saying during his contribution to the 2018 National Budget debate that “This party [AFC] must make hard decisions in relation to sugar”. But while VP Ramjattan was making such an incredulous statement in the Parliament, his Party in a statement was expressing “…its deep concern for the welfare of sugar workers who are likely to be affected by the changes contemplated by the GuySuCo”. The two statements are like night and day and cause us to wonder what is really the Party’s true position regarding the plight and the hopeless future which confronts so many thousands of our compatriots.
What is even more disturbing is that VP Ramjattan’s tune today is vastly different from the one he was singing prior to him receiving his Ministerial portfolio. At the APNU/AFC Whim rally on March 29, 2015 he said “we are not going to in anyway close the sugar industry”. He went on to say “we intend to make that industry profitable again…because it creates so much employment directly, but indirectly for so many people across this country”. The VP is also quoted to have said “…we would make the workers even happier with 20 per cent…”.
Now, today the workers are told by the VP that “Guyana’s sugar sector has a terminal illness that the Government cannot cure”. What a sad about face from a leader who told the sugar workers, not that very long ago, that the industry was too big to fail and that he and his colleagues will take care of them.
Today in ‘taking care’ of the workers, VP Ramjattan and his colleagues are writing a sad chapter of our history. We see him all too willing to ‘pull the plug’ and sending thousands to the army of the unemployed.
Yours faithfully,
Seepaul Narine
General Secretary
GAWU
