Minister, President offer different takes on Wales closure

Agriculture Minister Noel Holder has strayed a considerable way from statements made by President David Granger and statements he himself had made earlier about who really gave the go-ahead to close the Wales Sugar Estate.

As outrage spread following the “premature” announcement of the Wales Estate closure, Agriculture Minister Noel Holder at a post-Cabinet press briefing on January 20 stated that the decision to close the Wales Estate was one taken by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Board and was contained in its Budget and Action Plan for 2016.

It was explained that Holder was “at pains” to inform Cabinet of the Board’s decision.

The Minister had maintained this over that time. However, on his recent televised programme “The Public Interest”, President Granger informed that the decision was in fact made by Cabinet.

The President said: “A decision was made to close Wales, and it is a decision that Cabinet is responsible for.”

Asked to explain this, Holder said: “The budget from GuySuCo went to Cabinet late last year, and in that budget, the closure of Wales was on the cards.” So in essence the decision was made by the Board.

More contradictions

Meanwhile, Holder has also flipped on another issue relating to the Wales Estate. He had promised that the closure was only going to affect the factory and not the entire Estate.

GuySuCo Chairman, Dr Clive Thomas, however, recently told another media house that dismissed workers of Wales would be given an option or first priority to utilise the lands of the Estate.

According to Thomas, “as Chairman of GuySuCo I state, without qualification that, in the case of the intended Wales estate closure, the GuySuCo Board and its management team have exercised `their bounden duty’ and responsibility to secure a better future for the industry, without any outside instruction or direction, whatsoever. In deciding to close the Wales estate in 2017, our aim is to promote the greater long-term good of the entire workforce, the industry, and all its stakeholders, taking into account fully, the “dire straits”, in which GuySuCo has found itself in during recent decades.”

He said the closure of Wales is immediately linked to the commencement of diversification programmes envisaged to begin in October this year. Some of these programmes involve lands for workers to engage in peasant cane farming and lands for their farming of other crops as well. There are also programmes to seek to determine the commercial feasibility of alcohol production and aquaculture by GuySuCo at Wales.

But Holder speaking to this publication said the Estate’s sugar lands would not be farmed; however, the lands owned by private cane farmers would be farmed.

“Therefore, the 3000 hectares owned by the Estate will be kept for use that will come up later… the private will remain to be used for private cane farming, while the GuySuCo land will be left for further use including aquaculture, certain crops, dairy, etc,” he said