A highly promising future is foreseen for the sugar industry in Guyana following recent interventions aimed at boosting production.
This optimism was shared by the president of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU) Aslim Singh during a recent televised programme.
“There are initiatives now that are being forwarded to bring the industry up to standard mechanisation, improve yields, new varieties of cane, improving the factories, also the value-added initiatives like packaging, and there are some other things that I know Guyana is examining, to innovate and to make the operations much more efficient and to take it in a new direction, a direction which it should have gone to in a long time,” Singh stated.
According to the GAWU President, this upscale aligns with the broader growth that Guyana has been experiencing recently.
“We’re in exciting times, we are in times where we see a much brighter future ahead, an era in our country where I think our dreams, our long-held dreams can become reality. I think, you know, a critical element, an important element in our future will be sugar,” he stated.
Singh also highlighted a recent statement by President Dr. Irfaan Ali, emphasising Guyana’s potential to supply sugar to the entire Caribbean.
“I saw President Ali saying the other day and reiterating his government’s commitment to the industry that he believes, and I share his view, that Guyana can produce all the sugar that the Caribbean needs. Dr. Singh did allude to earlier that sugar in many other parts of the Caribbean has been downsized and they, unlike us, have deficits with land. We don’t have that.”
Acknowledging the traditional notion that mechanisation may displace labor, he explained that in the context of Guyana’s sugar industry, it is intended to augment labor.
“This is because we also have the challenge of more economic competition now in the labor market. And therefore, the ability of the industry to attract and retain its labor is also becoming more difficult,” he stated.
He further elaborated, “We are supportive of mechanisation in the sense of augmenting labor and making labor more productive because we see if a more productive industry, a more productive labor force, improves the conditions in industry economically, which will be beneficial to all parties in the industry.”
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