Ramjattan singing a different tune since he became a minister

TIMES INT'L

Dear Editor,
Vice President and Minister of Public Security, AFC Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan, is quoted in the Guyana Times of December 08, 2017 as saying, during his contribution to the 2018 National Budget debate: “This party [AFC] must make hard decisions in relation to sugar”.
But while VP Ramjattan was making such an incredulous statement in the Parliament, his Party was, in a statement, expressing “…its deep concern for the welfare of sugar workers, who are likely to be affected by the changes contemplated by the GuySuCo”.
The two statements are like night and day, and cause us to wonder what is really the Party’s true position regarding the plight and the hopeless future which confronts so many thousands of our compatriots.
What is even more disturbing is that VP Ramjattan’s tune today is vastly different from the one he was singing prior to receiving his ministerial portfolio. At the APNU/AFC Whim rally on March 29, 2016, he had said, “We are not going to, in any way, close the sugar industry”. He had gone on to say, “We intend to make that industry profitable again…because it creates so much employment directly, but indirectly for so many people across this country”.
On November 05, 2011, the VP is quoted to have said, “…we would make the workers even happier with 20 per cent…” Now, today, the workers are told by the VP that, “Guyana’s sugar sector has a terminal illness that the Government cannot cure”.
What a sad about-face from a leader who told the sugar workers not that very long ago that the industry was too big to fail, and that he and his colleagues would take care of them. Today, in ‘taking care’ of the workers, VP Ramjattan and his colleagues are writing a sad chapter of our history. We see him all too willing to ‘pull the plug’ and send thousands to the army of the unemployed.
Yours faithfully,
Seepaul Narine
General Secretary
GAWU

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