The Wales debacle: Sunlight?

By Ravi Dev

While Dr Clive Thomas might be a “town man”, he knows sugar as well, if not more than most who “come from the logies”. And that is why I was quite surprised when he, as Chairman of GuySuCo, went along with the abrupt announcement of the closure of Plantation Wales. Incidentally, I have never really accepted the foisted euphemism of changing “Plantation” to “estate”. This must have happened sometime after independence, since I distinctly remember as a boy in Primary School (Uitvlugt Church of Scotland School) painstakingly writing out my address as “Pln. Uitvlugt”.

Wales is not just any sugar plantation – it is the only one where both the workforce and the private farmers are almost equally split between African and Indian Guyanese. While for historical reasons, most African Guyanese left the sugar plantations after the abolition of slavery, at Wales they were much more successful in establishing a successful sugar planting peasantry. And this is an achievement that in our ethnically fractured country is a great resource.

Guyana has a comparative advantage in agriculture because of our land and water resources, but an equitable sharing of this advantage has proven problematical because of the ethnic disparity in farming. When, for instance, the colonial-era PPP Government developed the Black Bush Polder Rice Development Schemes after 1957, the small number of African Guyanese that received allotments precipitated a huge furore. The PPP was dubbed a “coolie rice government” by the PNC and the former’s explanation that the land was allocated in proportion to the applications did not satisfy African Guyanese.

Wales presents an opportunity for the two significant groups of Guyanese, which have literally been at each other’s throats on our coastland, to cooperate in order to save their common livelihood and their community. Wales can become a landmark in the touted aim to build “social cohesion” in our country if the Government can embark on a phased disengagement with sugar. To close it down suddenly or even to try to get out of sugar within a year will lead to an exacerbation of social tensions in an area that has generally been least affected by the 1960s fallout.

Over the weekend, Professor Thomas wrote in his column and, specifically acknowledging his role as Chairman of GuySuCo, declared: “The closure of Wales is immediately linked to the commencement of diversification programmes envisaged to begin in October coming this year. Some of these programmes involve lands for workers to engage in peasant cane farming and lands for their farming other crops as well. There are also programmes to seek to determine the commercial feasibility of alcohol production and aquaculture by GuySuCo at Wales.”

While this is certainly “too little” to completely assuage all the fears that have been aroused on the West Bank of Demerara, it is not too late for the Government to be more forthcoming with a proper plan that the 100,000 West Bank residents can consider. The proposals in this column as well as from several other sources are a signal of the nerve the Wales announcement struck in our country. We hope the Government does not squander this opportunity.

We repeat that we must expand the overall usage of the sugar cane’ products that will be forthcoming for quite a while at Wales, regardless. The Uitvlugt option is just not viable. The following are two other uses that can help bring down the overall cost of the sugar component.

The press-mud and wash, which are waste products in the production of sugar and alcohol, can be used for the production of bio-gas (methane). The technology has already been introduced by DDL in Guyana and the methane can be used to power modified vehicles.

Finally, there is the ethanol option. The production of anhydrous ethanol from molasses or sugarcane juice is an established technology that is well within our present skill capabilities gleaned from our production of alcohol for spirits. As was tested at Albion, a 10% alcohol mix can be introduced into the engines of vehicles without any modification of the latter. It is proposed that we establish a refinery at Wales, which will utilise all the molasses produced by the Demerara Plantations to produce ethanol.