OPM refutes Nandlall’s lies – calls on sugar workers not to fall prey to attempts to incite

Office of the Prime Minister, Monday, June 19, 2017 – The Office of the Prime Minister sternly refutes blatant falsehoods being peddled by opposition parliamentarian Anil Nandlall in an obvious effort to incite sugar workers.

Mr. Nandlall has descended to all-time low blows against the Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo and fabricated a litany of lies in his desperate diatribes published in today’s edition of the opposition newspaper, Guyana Times as an “Op-Ed”.

Nandlall is reported to have stated that in 2011 the Prime Minister, then in opposition, had promised sugar workers 25% increase in wages. This is a crude invention for which Nandlall can give no proof.

It is clear that Nandlall was unleashed by his handler against the Prime Minister after his devastating exposure of the Bharrat Jagdeo regime for bankrupting the sugar industry during the June 15th sitting of the National Assembly. The Opposition Leader had fallen into a trap when he insisted on speaking after the Prime Minister, only to receive a brutal verbal thrashing and bludgeoning by Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, the footage of which has since gone viral under.

The Prime Minister has consistently exposed the Jagdeo-led PPP for bringing the sugar industry to its knees. While addressing a Cane Conference in August 2015 – three months after the Coalition took office – the Prime Minister said, “[t]oday sugar is no longer king. It has been reduced to the state of a pauper, a beggar that lives off handouts from the state.”

Mr. Nandlall is resorting to typical vendetta politics in a lame attempt at getting at the Prime Minister for Jagdeo’s inept attempt to avoid blame for the crisis in the sugar industry, and for trying to sidetrack the $82BILLION indebtedness of GUYSUCO and the colossal waste of $50BILLION on the failed Skeldon factory.

Mr. Jagdeo could not shrug off claims that his regime had started to close sugar estates and that sugar lands were hived off to PPP cronies.

Mr. Nandlall is also peddling the gargantuan lie that the Coalition Government had blocked bailouts for the sugar industry. On the contrary, the Coalition Government, even while it was in opposition, voted for every bailout package for sugar workers.

Further after it took office, the Coalition Government voted for over $32 BILLION (2015-2017) to further help the sugar industry stay afloat and to pay wages to sugar workers, whilst it worked on a plan to make the industry profitable. The Coalition Government has tabled in Parliament ideas to do so through merger of operations and diversification.

The Office of the Prime Minister condemns Mr. Nandlall and the PPP for attempting to exploit the situation in the sugar industry by making it into a political fun-game, and for kicking the fate of sugar workers like a football.

Sugar workers must not allow themselves to be fooled by opportunistic, political hustlers like Mr. Nandlall and must not fall victim to their desperate campaign of stirring racism and division.

 

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