Former broadcaster and agriculturalist Tony Vieira recently had a tumultuous parting from the state-owned Sugar Corporation, GuySuCo after leaked tapes of the organization’s last board meeting revealed a heated exchange between embattled CEO Sasenarine Singh and members of the board, including Vieira.
Vieira and like-minded board members are of the view that among the issues of bad management facing the entity, is the purchasing of the “Game” brand of tractors as against the “John Deer” brand touted to be of superior quality.
In a recent letter in the press, Vieira stated, that the Game tractor is “unfit for ploughing” and noted, “that we can buy this tractor to only harrow, which requires less power, and use the Deere/New Holland tractors to do the donkey work of ploughing is patently ridiculous.”
The former PNC Parliamentarian stated that “The trial produced some very revealing results, the Game tractor is 50% more expensive than the John Deere, so the money spent to buy two of these tractors is the same as to obtain 3 John Deere ploughing tractors, in the trial, the John Deer used 50% less fuel to do the same work.”
Vieira is also of the view that those who are in favour of the Game tractor, “to make the Game tractor more attractive and without the permission of the board, the management of GuySuCo changed the standing policy of the corporation to remove three cuts of ploughing and harrowing in our land preparation policy”.
The former board member said the current, “CEO was appointed around September 2020, and the production of GuySuCo was 88,000 tonnes in that year. In just two years I am saying that if we achieve half of that amount in 2022, I would be very surprised.”
GuySuCo is currently facing an unprecedented sugar shortage to supply the national market, with the commodity being rationed by supermarkets. As a result, sugar is being retailed, one pack per person. To date, $27.5 billion dollars has been spent on the corporation with its most recent allocation being $3.4 billion dollars approved on August 8, 2022, by the National Assembly, boycotted by the Parliamentary Opposition.
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