Why are GuySuCo ads underwritten by the Factory Operations Department?

Dear Editor,

Your issues of Sept 28 and Sept 30 carried GuySuCo advertisements inviting bids for infrastructural works for the transportation of cane to Uitvlugt, and construction of a tractor and trailer park, roadway and reinforced concrete flat bridges at Uitvlugt Estate.

Why do the ads still say that a site visit has been arranged for Sept 27? This is mismanagement. And why are the ads signed or underwritten by the Factory Operations Department? This is also mismanagement. It tells me, a qualified sugar technologist, that top management has no idea of the important job of the Factory Operations Department. It is a job for the site construction or civil engineering department, not for chemists and mechanical engineers of the factory.

It also explains why we cannot get the insoluble solids content of brown sugar from the communications department for the compilation of the Caricom Regional Organisation for Standards & Quality (CROSQ) standards. These standards are important for clarity in selling our sugar in regional and international markets. And, as I am one of those representing the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) on CROSQ, I am also concerned about the quality of sugar for local consumption.

It is evident just from this one ad that GuySuCo is highly mismanaged. Add to that the corporation does not answer questions and has to hire a communications department to censor information from the few competent technical people remaining. Let the communications department instead fix that national outrage of a website that is 8 years out of date and makes me ashamed when I see the websites of other Caricom countries that produce far less sugar than we do.

When GuySuCo condescends to deal with the workers, they are informed of ‘meetings’ two days in advance and with no agenda.

And whatever the ‘diversification plan’ is, it is evidently still a top secret. So much for President Granger’s inauguration song of ‘Let us cooperate for Guyana’ in the Cooperative Republic!

Yours faithfully, Alfred Bhulai