NAGAMOOTOO HAS TOTALLY BETRAYED SUGAR WORKERS

Nov 30, 2016 Letters

---

Dear Editor,

Moses Nagamootoo this past week demanded sugar workers should be grateful that APNU+AFC have “raided” the treasury on their behalf. I wonder what he thinks about the annual electricity subvention of $5B to Linden. Is this also “raiding” the treasury? Should Lindeners bow in gratitude to APNU+AFC? In 2012, Nagamootoo and his APNU+AFC colleagues, in inciting the people of Linden, proclaimed the electricity subvention as an obligation of the government and something the country owes to Linden. A subvention to GUYSUCO is “raiding” of the treasury; the subvention to Linden is an obligation.
Nagamootoo when he speaks on or about sugar these days does so from the comfort of his plush office in Georgetown. He does not go to the sugar belt communities to address sugar workers anymore because he knows that they know he has totally betrayed them. He presented himself as the champion of sugar workers, promising them before the 2015 election that sugar in Guyana will always be #1 and he will ensure sugar workers get an annual pay increase of 20%, doubling their wages in a single APNU+AFC term. Today he is busy working with APNU+AFC to close sugar in Guyana.
Even as APNU+AFC/GUYSUCO denied sugar workers any increase in 2015 and 2016, Nagamootoo is quiet. Zero pay increase for two successive years and Nagamootoo has amnesia, forgetting he and his colleagues promised 20% annual increases to sugar workers. Indeed, before the 2015 elections, I heard him assured sugar workers that the APNU+AFC 20% proposal for sugar workers was not a promise, but a contract. Today, the “contract” with sugar workers has been disavowed.
APNU+AFC for two successive years has imposed a zero wage increase for sugar workers, joining the PNC, which after nationalization in 1976 imposed a zero wage increase for workers in 1979, 1982 and 1983. These were the only years in which sugar workers failed to get a wage increase since 1940. Booker Tate played hardball with sugar workers, but as far as I am aware, they always granted some kind of wage increase between 1940 and 1976. The PPP between 1992 and 2014 always granted a wage increase, even when times were not good and even if sugar workers thought they deserved more.
Nagamootoo has stood by quietly and allowed sugar workers to be trampled upon. When forced by news reporters to comment this past week, he demanded sugar workers should be grateful for APNU+AFC “raiding” the treasury on their behalf. But it is Nagamootoo who should be grateful that some sugar workers were seduced by his and APNU+AFC’s promise of 20% annual increases in wages and they voted for the coalition. It is those votes that made the difference and allowed APNU+AFC to become the government and Nagamootoo to be Prime Minister. It is Nagamootoo who is ungrateful, not the sugar workers because APNU+AFC would never have been in government if a small band of sugar workers did not use their democratic right and voted for APNU+AFC. The workers gambled and Nagamootoo and APNU+AFC now reward them with silence, arrogance and abandonment and call them ungrateful.
APNU+AFC, as Nagamootoo contends, have raided the public treasury in unprecedented manner, greedily and recklessly, but definitely not on behalf of sugar workers. They have raided the public treasury, squandering taxpayer’s money on themselves and their friends. While denying sugar workers a wage increase, they raided the public treasury to give themselves (the cabinet) a hefty pay increase of about 50 to 75% over 2015 and 2016, reward Hamilton Green with a $25M annual pension package, hire some of their friends as consultants and advisors at super salaries and give sweetheart deals to their friends, like the $450M medical warehouse deal over three years.
I suspect Nagamootoo was referring to subventions to GUYSUCO to meet operational costs as “raiding” the treasury for sugar workers. Let us be clear, these are not handouts and these subventions are not raiding the treasury. GUYSUCO provided more than $100B in the form of the sugar levy to the Guyana Government between 1976 and 1995. GUYSUCO has performed duties on behalf of central and local government forever, providing drainage and irrigation, medical care for its employees and families, and sports facilities for more than 100 years. In addition, GUYSUCO earns payments from the EU (more than $3B this year) as compensation for the arbitrary disavowal of the 1976 sugar protocol. Government’s subvention to GUYSUCO, whether under the PPP or now under APNU+AFC, is a repayment to GUYSUCO, as I stated in Parliament in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Not only is he silent on the zero wage increase, Nagamootoo is silent on the closure of Wales and LBI by end of 2016. He has not said a word about the plans to close Skeldon, Rose Hall and Enmore before 2018. When he dares open his mouth, he justifies APNU+AFC’s plan to close sugar and calls sugar workers ungrateful. He has totally betrayed the sugar workers. In the meantime, Khemraj Ramjattan has been similarly silent. Their silence is the ultimate betrayal of sugar workers. Sugar workers will not forget.
Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

---

---