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Wales closure…GUYSUCO meets with sugar unions but no agreement reached
Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) management held meetings yesterday with representatives
Head of GAWU, Komal Chand
of the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE) and the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU).
Chief on the agenda was the recent decision to close the Wales estate on the West Bank Demerara (WBD), a decision that has ignited much public debate. Head of GAWU, Komal Chand, confirmed that while the meeting was held, much remains unresolved.
Among the examples presented by Chand was the fact that a decision has not been reached on who will make up the list of workers to be made redundant, or when this will be compiled.
It is understood that GUYSUCO’s Chief Executive Officer, Errol Hanoman, indicated that there will be future meetings to determine who on the list of employees at Wales will be transferred to the Uitvlugt estate. However, before such is done, the list has to be submitted to the Ministry of Labour.
Hanoman has also pledged to ensure that most of the employees are absorbed at the Uitvlugt estate. However, Chand yesterday stated that the alternate business to be adopted on the Wales estate was not discussed.
“We asked them to clarify how they disagreed with the COI recommendations,” Chand said, in light of a part of the report that recommends no closure of factories in the interim of amalgamating estates.
“In our views, we are now to disregard the COI report. (However) they informed us that the decision was made by the board”
On Monday, the administration announced that Wales estate will be closed this year with operations to be handled by Uitvlugt, a factory located a few miles away on the West Coast of Demerara.
Government insisted that Wales is the poorest performing estate in country, expecting to rack up losses of $1.9B this year. The administration said on Monday that there will be no land preparation or planting this year for the Wales estate and that a number of staffers not taken up by Uitvlugt will be made redundant.
Wales Estate
The opposition party has been arguing that the recently concluded Commission of Inquiry did not recommend closure of estates.
“The Government is therefore disregarding its own Commission’s findings. Sugar has been taking a beating for the last decade, falling to its worst performance in 20 years.
With world prices low and sugar being produced at double the world prices, previous governments have been attempting to find solutions to reverse the losses which have seen cash bailouts by the state each year amounting to billions of dollars.
The US$200M new Skeldon factory, commissioned by former President Bharrat Jagdeo, had been a drag on the industry. It only started to produce positively last year.
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