Feeling Hot or What? --- THE driver of this canter truck, GHH 739, narrowly escaped a watery grave after the vehicle plunged in the Vlissengen Road canal around 01:30 hrs yesterday.

But for those who weren’t around at the time of the accident, questions about whether the driver - or the vehicle - was hot or what may have come to mind. Certainly, the vehicle couldn’t be for hire from where it was going or ended up! (Delano Williams photo)
He made the observation at a ceremony to honour five sugar workers, referred to as the ‘Enmore Martyrs’, who were killed over their rights by colonial police 55 years ago.

The President said critics of a US$70M project for a state-of-the-art factory at Skeldon, Berbice, are not addressing concerns about the viability of the industry.

The reality is that in 2007 the sugar regime under which Guyana has been exporting and getting huge preferential prices in Europe, is going to change.

“When we hear we should not go with the new project, we’re not hearing of an alternative. Not doing anything is no alternative because one day we’ll wake up and the sugar industry will disappear,” President Jagdeo cautioned.

More than 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) member countries have not succeeded in efforts to avoid the move by European nations making decisions on the basis of their sovereignty that will ultimately affect countries like Guyana.

President Jagdeo said if the preferential market goes tomorrow or by 2007, Guyana would be producing sugar at a far higher cost than current world market prices, and making huge losses.

Two-thirds of the industry’s revenue goes to employment bills and the challenge is to develop a programme to cut the cost of production and diversify into other activities. This is why the Government has been talking about shifting production to low cost areas and developing co-generation - the use of by-products - for a multi-purpose use of sugar that will help sustain the industry, the President said.

He reported that private investors have already expressed interest in setting up a distillery, which will use by-products of sugar manufacturing.

Mr. Komal Chand, President of the Guyana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), who also addressed the Enmore Martyrs ceremony, said labour representatives “recently breathed some fresh air” when Mr. Vic Oditt, Chairman of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO), said there was no intention to close operations.

Chand said there must be a tireless fight to stave off closure of sugar estates in the county of Demerara which could cause thousands of workers, cane farmers and businesses to suffer.

“Let us don’t follow those charlatans who are supporting the closure of the Demerara estates. Our union will fight to save (them) and not capitulate to the calls of the financial institutions.

“If we lose the war to save the industry, it would have been after we would have exhausted all the means possible to save the estates,” Chand declared at the ceremony hosted on a grassy plot opposite the Enmore Martyrs Monument Square at Enmore, East Coast Demerara.