The Guyana gov­ern­ment Wednes­day said it is hold­ing dis­cus­sions with In­dia and Guatemala to pro­vide tech­ni­cal man­age­r­i­al sup­port to the State-owned Guyana Sug­ar Cor­po­ra­tion (GUY­SU­CO). 

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali ad­dress­ing the 22nd del­e­gates Con­gress of the Guyana Agri­cul­tur­al Work­ers Union (GAWU), said the tech­ni­cal sup­port man­age­ment would be ex­pect­ed to “dri­ve the in­no­va­tion”, change and sur­vival of the sug­ar in­dus­try. 

Ali said struc­tur­al changes would have to made at GUY­SU­CO’s man­age­ment lev­el, in­sist­ing “we are not walk­ing away from sug­ar”. 

He told the au­di­ence that the Rose Hall sug­ar es­tate would be re­opened next month and praised the GAWU for han­dling re­cent in­dus­tri­al un­rest by work­ers who want­ed to be com­pen­sat­ed for go­ing back to work for Rose Hall. 

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter, Zul­fikar Mustapha, speak­ing on a gov­ern­ment pro­gramme, said the de­ci­sion to re-open the Rose Hall sug­ar es­tate, aligns with the gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to restart the sug­ar in­dus­try, which makes a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion and of­fers em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties to the res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty. 

Be­tween the pe­ri­od 2015 to 2020, an es­ti­mat­ed 5,262 sug­ar work­ers from across the coun­try lost their jobs and in 2017, 912 work­ers were dis­missed due to the clo­sure of the es­tate. 

Mustapha said the GUY­SU­CO has record­ed a 14 per cent in­crease in pro­duc­tion so far this year. 

“By the end of Sep­tem­ber, Rose Hall will be­come op­er­a­tional and Rose Hall es­tate will start to crush cane once again. We have al­ready em­ployed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,100 work­ers who were sev­ered at Rose Hall. We have al­ready com­plet­ed two sets of steam tri­als which were ex­treme­ly suc­cess­ful. We have re­plant­ed cane and we have cane to last us for the en­tire sec­ond crop of 2023,” he said. 

The Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter said the Rose Hall Es­tate will make a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion in terms of re­al­is­ing a to­tal of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60,000 tonnes of sug­ar that GUY­SU­CO has set as the tar­get for the year. 

“We will be re­plant­i­ng an­oth­er 536 hectares of new canes for Rose Hall cul­ti­va­tion,” he said, adding “we have to do a lot of work to clear it. We have to do re-till­ing, re­plant­i­ng, and re­ha­bil­i­tate the en­tire me­chan­i­cal tillage sys­tem. 

“I am hop­ing to or­gan­ise the recom­mis­sion­ing very short­ly where Pres­i­dent Ali will go up to have that recom­mis­sion­ing at Rose Hall es­tate. We have done a lot of work there,” 

Gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed GUY$1.195 bil­lion (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) to help with the es­tate’s re­open­ing for the sec­ond crop in 2023.