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The harsh lot of the sugar workers

Feb 15, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
Mr Editor, as I am wont to do to begin my day here in New York, I open the Guyana newspapers on line and read in minute details all the news on my dear, suffering country of my birth, Guyana.
The plethora of sad news that hits your conscious as you go through this daily exercise is almost suffocating.
I lived and worked among sugar workers on the Corentyne in the 70’s and 80’s and experienced how these hard working people eked out a living.
Some of them who knew me, used to approach me at work to help them alter their pay slips to reflect a $5 difference, monies which then used to buy themselves and friends a drink.,
In addition, I witnessed how some of them went to the butchers’ stand at the Bank Markets and ordered a quarter pound of pork or beef to take home to their large families. I saw how these workers on payday were trampled, herded on, in line to uplift their pay. Every cent earned had to be eked out through a strike, protest demonstration etc.
They did not enjoy the fat entitlements of workers in the Public Service like meal allowance, hazard and height allowance, travel allowance and prompt uninterrupted pay on the taking of sick leave etc etc,
Yet, in modern day Guyana of the PPP/C Jagdeo and Ramotar cabal, these are the conditions under which sugar workers, the real “Champions of the Earth”; the proverbial “Salt of the Earth”, continue to subsist.,
Lionel Peters

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