AFC never advocated for Sugar Industry to close down – Nagamootoo

By Fareeza Haniff

[www.inewsguyana.com] – The Alliance For Change (AFC) says it never proposed that the country’s sugar industry should close down and is in fact accusing the government of strangling the industry.

Executive Member of the Party, Moses Nagamootoo at a press conference on Thursday, March 13 said the Party called for a transformation of the industry.

He told reporters, “To make it clear, the AFC’s call for transformation would ensure the survival and sustainability of the industry based on complete sacking and replacement of the Board of Directors with competent persons, a Commission of Inquiry into the Skeldon Factory where $44 billion of taxpayers money went into modernising this ‘white elephant’, diversification to include ethanol production and alcohol products and involve the Union in the management of the Corporation.”

Nagamootoo, who is also a former member of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), accused the governing Party of bringing the “sugar industry to its knees through mismanagement, cronyism and downright disregard for the livelihoods of sugar workers.”

AFC Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan told iNews during an interview on Wednesday (March 12) that the Party supports A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) in its call for a shift from decades of sugar production into a direction of ethanol production and aquaculture.

Following the APNU’s announcement on Tuesday, March 11 the President, Agriculture Minister and other senior government officials became enraged and strongly condemned and rejected the call which Dr. Leslie Ramsammy described as a “wicked plan” by the APNU to close down the sugar industry.