Latest update November 29th, 2024 1:00 AM
‘Finance Ministry disrespected sugar workers’
Retroactive Tax Waiver
– Union President
By Fareeza Haniff
President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU), Komal Chand, says that the Ministry of Finance has disrespected sugar workers, organisations and the union by not acknowledging receipt of the letter sent to the Ministry by the union requesting a waiver of income tax on a recently awarded three per cent retroactive pay.
On Wednesday last, a number of sugar workers protested in front of the Ministry, demanding that their request be fulfilled.
President of GAWU: Komal Chand
However, according to Chand, the sugar workers were paid on December 24, 2009 without a waiver on the tax, so in essence he said they were only given a two per cent increase.
Chand explained to Kaieteur News yesterday that there is not much that the union could do, but to vent their comments and frustrations through the media and by way of protesting. The protest exercises he said have exposed many inadequacies within the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. (GuySuCo).
He is still adamant that the Finance Ministry should give the sugar workers the tax waiver, as adjustments can still be made to their salaries.
During Wednesday’s protest, the union representatives, carrying placards, accused the Finance Minister of lying to the public when he said that government invested a total of US$113.1 million in the Skeldon sugar factory.
One placard stated that the US$113 is a loan, so the government could not have invested that
Similarly, a US$12M funding for the establishment of a sugar packaging plant represented monies from the European Union as part of the programme to assist Guyana, following phased sugar price cuts in that region.
GAWU, in the letter on Monday to Dr Singh, requested the Ministry’s “consideration to waive the Income Tax on the retroactive payment of three (3) per cent from January 1, 2009, arising from the Gobind Ganga Arbitral Tribunal recommendation.”
GAWU, in arguing the case for the tax waiver, said that similar deserving steps were taken in the past when public servants received a special $4,000 allowance awarded to them last year.
The letter, written by GAWU’s General Secretary, Seepaul Narine, was also copied to Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, and GuySuCo’s Chief Executive Officer, Errol Hanoman.
In October, wage talks between GuySuCo and GAWU broke down after the Corporation refused to budge from a three per cent offer. GAWU had demanded 15 per cent but came down to 10 per cent.
Conciliation talks went nowhere and Government stepped in last month and ordered a compulsory arbitration.
A three-person Tribunal headed by Bank of Guyana’s Dr. Gobind Ganga earlier this month “recommended” a three per cent increase.
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