The GAWU could not have failed to recognize the recent statements by Vice President and Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan with respect to the sugar industry. An Inews report of August 26 informed that the Minister, during a meeting held in Corriverton, reportedly told his audience “…that the Government made the right decision to close the estates”. While it is now publicly acknowledged the Minister is known for his outlandish statements and has found his foot in his mouth on more than one occasion, his utterances on this time around has even defied, in our view, even the low expectations that many had of him.
While the Minister, seemingly preaching from his ivory tower, justifies, unashamedly, the decision to shutter estates which in its wake put thousands on the breadline, the communities and people linked to Skeldon, Rose Hall, East Demerara and Wales are going through miserable times and hardship-filled days and nights. Today, while the Minister and his colleagues make wishy-washy statements and provide sordid rationales, there are people in the precincts of the closed-estates that find it hard to eat; or to pay their bills or to send their children to school. The public is well-aware of the situation wherein the people of Skeldon must pay NICIL to catch fish in the canals to feed their families. Then there is the more recent instance, where a child of a redundant sugar worker is unable to take up a space at the illustrious Queens College as his parents, simply, cannot afford to meet the expenditure.
The Minister went on to tell those he spoke to that “…the citizenry would become filthy rich in the near future with the booming oil sector coming on stream”. It seems the Minister is saying that we should place all our eggs in one basket. It is disheartening that an educated person and more so a national leader is making such outrageous statements. Time, experience and history have thought us that we never should place all our eggs in a singular basket. Moreover, recently Minister Winston Jordan tempered expectations when he said that oil revenues in the early years will just be a few hundred million United States dollars hardly sufficient to make us all “filthy rich”. Then, at the same time, we cannot ignore the many views expressed regarding the lopsided arrangements regarding oil exploitation that has been entered into. We really wonder whether the Minister’s feet were on the ground when he was speaking.
Today, while the Minister goes on to justify the unjustifiable, it was not too long ago and not too far away from Corriverton, when then Mr Ramjattan told an APNU-AFC rally at Whim, during the 2015 elections campaign, that if elected, they “…will not in any way close the sugar industry…”. Indeed, it goes to show that you can no longer take anything at face value from Minister Ramjattan and his ilk.
