Dysfunction, nonchalance in supervising of sugar industry

Dear Editor,

The article appearing in SN of Tuesday 5 February, speaks to some fundamental deficits in what are normal organisational relationships, but albeit not inconsistent with governance structures known to us citizens.

The exhaustive, if not exhausting, article exposes the illogic of a Head of a Unit (the SPU) acceding to the reported position of Chairman of an Agency – NICIL – who (theoretically) is managed by a Board of Directors. It is a fundamental organisational conundrum which allows the Head to report to himself.

The process which this mis-construction reflects is the indifference of the other substantive members of the Board. How long will this situation be allowed to continue?

What is also of interest, from the remarks contained in the article, is the reported nonchalance of the related Ministry, and worse, the total by-pass of the Ministry charged with supervising the sugar industry, who fortunately is old enough to display some of its innate resilience.

In the meantime, there is no word in the expanded commentary of how effective, if at all, NICIL/SPU has been in coordinating active restorative interest of the final two reported investors.

Incidentally, no one seems to have interpreted the less than subtle implications of the withdrawal of interest by a partner from decades of association with the sugar industry – DDL. Knowing its high ethical standards, there are those who would appreciate the reasons for their separation from a ‘Heath-bonded’ environment. (Incidentally, GuySuCo was never party to the terms of the bonds)

And yet, there is talk of too much inebriation conducted ‘specially’ in the premises established as the legal property of GuySuCo.

It is difficult to understand, how this

exercise in liquid sportsmanship is related to the revivability of the closed sugar estates – moreso at the apparent indifference of the Board of GuySuCo.

Why should the latter not insist on unambiguously declaring its legal ownership of what has long been recognised as GuySuCo’s Training Centre?

But, in the end, who is it that monitors the expenditure on the fluid consumption by interlopers on the premises of a historic property owner?

In all the circumstances, is it a matter for the courts? Or should the respective Ministries be more proactively engaged?

Yours faithfully, E.B. John