Sugar workers at Skeldon pull punts

Nov 25, 2009 News

Sugar workers at Skeldon Saturday pulled punts using ropes tied to their waist and shoulders, shocking factory workers, this past week.
“It was like slavery,” said one factory worker who spoke with Kaieteur News on the basis of anonymity.
The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) has admitted that the workers did this, but insisted that it was a decision that the workers made on their own because they did not want to wait on the tractor to take the punts to the location.
“There was absolutely no need for any worker to go and pull empty punts by the factory since the estate has more than adequate tractors to undertake this activity as part of the daily routine,” the estates Agricutural Manager explained in an email to Skeldon’s General Manager, Vishnu Panday.
In the email forwarded to Kaieteur News, the manager explained that the estate has three harvesting gangs– 8A, 8C,8D– with a potential of harvesting and loading 200 punts manually on a daily basis.
Cane supply is balanced with both close and far canes by distributing the gangs accordingly in the cultivation, the manager explained.
He said that the work is planned routinely so that gangs further aback of the cultivation always receive punts in preference to gangs in close proximity of the factory.
Further, there is an agreement between management and the union which allows for workers to be compensated on an hourly basis once they finish cutting their canes and empty punts are not available, he said.
The cut off time for waiting is 2:00pm after which a worker is free to leave with his day’s compensation and return the following day to load the canes, the manager said.
On Saturday morning, the Manager said there was indeed a factory stoppage and the empty punts to satisfy the 8C and 8D gangs further aback were available at 11:00 am after which the 8A gang in close proximity of the factory would receive their punt.
However about 9:30 am, fifteen workers from the 8A gang proceeded to the factory area and collected ten empty punts destined for the 8C and 8D gang aback.
“These workers acted on their own and pulled the punts to their work site in order to avoid waiting time,” the manager said.
“This was uncalled for since the 8A gang loaded a total of 28 punts and the remaining eighteen punts were dispatched with a tractor by 11:30 am,” he added.
“It is uneconomical to have a 45hp tractor pulling two and three punts in repeated trips rather than making a single trip with 28 punts.
“It is clear that some workers indeed pull punts today, no such instructions were given…Please note that we have adequate tractors – perhaps more than what is required given the present low turnout of our harvesters – to fulfil our punt haulage at any time throughout the day,” Panday said.
Contacted for comment, Errol Hanoman, the Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo said that the incident was “a rather sugar industry specific scenario which would not be easily understood by those outside of the industry.”

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Sugar workers at Skeldon pull punts

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