A Tale of Two Countries?

Nov 28, 2010 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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By Raphael Trotman,
AFC Leader

The job of any government should be to improve the lives of the citizens by not only raising their economic standard of living, but also by relieving them from oppression and injustice, and ameliorating harsh realities such as hunger, homelessness, prejudice, and other social ills that beset every society.
And so, it remains inexplicable, that the ruling party will do little or nothing to assist the people of Region 10, in the main, who were laid off, allegedly wrongfully, by the Bauxite Company at Aroaima just over a year ago.
These workers, have protested, highlighted, petitioned, written, pleaded, invoked the good offices of their international affiliates and demanded of the opposition parliamentarians that we bring this matter up for debate in the National Assembly.
At the end of one year, despite the mountain of protests, this callous government has turned its stony face away from these workers, and their families, and just outrightly refused to intervene in a matter that is causing serious social dislocation within the interior town of Kwakwani, and in other Region 10 communities, particularly Linden. These are the communities from which the labour force for the Guyana Bauxite Company Inc. is drawn.
I ask: what is it about the people of Region 10 that draws so much hatred? It boggles the mind, and I am left to conclude that there is a deliberate, calculated and diabolical plot to keep residents of Region 10 in a half-dead state – always starved for information, money, jobs, housing, good functioning social services. Recall that this Region still cannot get access to basic local television information despite a Court Order, petitions, pleas and demonstrations.
I can choose any sector, from health to education, and the story will replicate itself always. Nurses are robbed and raped at the hospital and still some of the same conditions that contributed remain, and the water supplied is some of the worst in any part of the country. The only job a new graduate of a Region 10 High School is guaranteed, is the one that pays $25,000 per month for weeding and cleaning drains. This is the only steady employment that there is in the mining town outside of Bosai’s operations, and it is the only one that the government is prepared to have a hand in. Menial, demoralizing, degrading work is what the government if Guyana is prepared to offer to new graduates.
In education, the Ministry of Education’s “no child left behind” policy is wreaking havoc, because unlike the George W. Bush programme of the same name, which ensured that all students in a class met a minimum standard so as to ensure that the entire class was promoted and eventually graduated on merit and capacity, our programme is based on a numerical value system that says that even if you averaged 8% overall in Form 1 (Grade 7) whilst the rest of your classmates averaged 55%, you still get promoted because at the end of the year the Ministry of Education can boast that there is 100% literacy in Guyana and the government is doing very well.
So, at the end of the day, whilst the government “looks” good, the community suffers because the state rewarded mediocrity and under-performance and turned everything upside down. The long term effect is a dysfunctional community and a dysfunctional society. Now, in a community where income levels are below the poverty line and there is less access to private schooling and remedial classes, a community like Linden is condemned to a life of misery.
The more I write this, it is the more that I am convinced that there is a systemic and diabolical plot to cripple an entire Region, not only for today, but for generations to come, and I challenge the government to debate this point on any sector – health, education, jobs, housing, roads, or another subject that they wish to choose. Therefore, the stand that Christianburg/Wismar Secondary School Headmaster, Mr. Cleveland Thomas took, is deserving of the support of all right-thinking citizens. He is a hero!
So now I return to the issue of hundreds of workers of Aroaima and Kwakwani whose jobs were jeopardized last year. When I visited, I saw with my own eyes the terrorizing presence of three black clothes squads. Why was that necessary if all the workers wanted to do was hold a legitimate protest to highlight their plight? Even the President of GAWU acknowledged that the treatment of these workers was wrong and remarked that the view could very well be formed that sugar workers were a “favoured lot” because of the obvious contrast between the treatments of sugar workers as against bauxite workers.
The GAWU President went further to say, “What started out as a Union’s (GB&GWU’s) simple but fundamental demand for increased wages and the re-instatement of a certain type of overtime pay later blossomed into a prolonged dispute now involving recognition, questionable terminations, union-busting, and alleged violations of both local and international labour laws and conventions.” Cheers for Komal Chand!
Now, not so long ago, another foreign company, Barama, laid off 274 workers after a boiler system at its plywood factory allegedly stopped working. Within minutes, not the Minister of Labour under whose portfolio such issues arise, but the President himself, jumped into the fray and used words which, in my opinion were rightly made, and ought to have been made in the case of the foreign-owned bauxite company.
In contrast to the bauxite workers, the Guyana government made an extremely generous offer to the tune of $30 million comprising, training in the skill and use of computers, and a $25,000 monthly stipend for each dismissed worker. Not done there, the President also quite appropriately stated that his government has a “sneaking suspicion that there is no sense of urgency to resume operations, but let me make it clear, if Barama thinks that they will just be cutting wood in Guyana and exporting wood and not resuming operations, they have another thing coming”.
How much more beautiful those words would have sounded if they had been uttered in November, 2009 against Rusal when this issue first arose.
We in the AFC never believed that the government would abandon the cause of the workers so easily and yet today, we see them as hypocritical and playing-the-fool by making harsh statements against Barama as if they are strong in protecting workers against foreign companies and are all for workers’ rights.
Is it a tale of two companies and a tale of two countries that needs to be spoken? Why is it that there is “spunk” in dealing with one, but the other is treated like a fragile egg; not to be bruised or offended? Are we living in two countries where the rule of law is upheld and applied unequally and where there is a fight up by the government for our workers against one foreign conglomerate, but not the other?
In December 2009, the AFC stated “Moreover, it is ironic that the PPP government – which claims it is the working class party – has chosen to side with a corporation, which has not been kind to our workers and the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union. We are of the view that all avenues have not been exhausted that can bring about immediate improvements in the welfare of workers.”
We repeat and rely on those words today because the government’s heart seems to have become harder. I leave these questions for answer by the PPP regime: Is it discrimination because of race? Is it discrimination because of geographical location? Is it discrimination because of political affiliation? Is it a tale of two countries?

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