An insult to sugar workers!

Mar 21, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The government should pay the redundant workers of Wales Estate their entitlements. The law provides for these workers to be paid severance and they should be paid.
These benefits are due under the law which deals with severance and termination benefits. It would be unfortunate if sugar workers are forced to go to the courts to compel the sugar company or the government to pay them their entitlements.
The law is very clear as to the entitlements of workers whose services are no longer required and who cannot be offered employment of a similar kind within a specified radius.
Even if that prescription was not specified within the law, it is unreasonable to ask a sugar worker who lives in Wales or a surrounding area to go and work at another estate which is more than fifteen miles from where he lives.
This was the same argument which was used by the workers of Diamond in 2011 when they were being told that alternative employment was available at Enmore and LBI. It makes no sense for sugar workers to be travelling that distance to work on another estate. It cannot pay them, especially considering the time which they have to rise to get to work.
Of course, strictly speaking, the payments should come from the Guyana Sugar Corporation, but since that entity does not have the capacity to pay, the workers should be paid by the government.
The all-purpose company which was established for the works at D’Urban Park owed a number of contractors. The government, without having seen the contracts which these persons would have signed, absorbed liabilities to the tune of $750M or double what it will take to pay the sugar workers at Wales their severance. However, the government is reportedly claiming that it does not have the fiscal space to pay the workers.
How can you pay contractors but refuse to pay poor sugar workers? This is eye-pass to the sugar workers. This is shameful, and it is worrying that the Alliance for Change can be a party to this situation. It was the same Alliance for Change which instigated workers at Diamond to protest for severance after the PPP/C regime had refused to pay severance. It is disgraceful that the AFC is part of a government which finds itself making the excuse that it cannot find the money.
The money can be found. The treasury is not empty. GuySuCo has assets to back its present liabilities plus the amount that is owed to the workers. The government is not cash–strapped. It is not contracting. It is expanding. There is no reason why the $375M cannot be found to pay the sugar workers at Wales.
The Ministry of Agriculture ought to have known that workers would have had to be paid severance when those workers were made redundant at Wales. The government had a year to set aside the money, since early notice was given that the estate would be closed. There is no excuse for not paying the workers.
It is a further insult that they are being treated this way in the 100th anniversary year of the abolition of Indian indentureship, even though both African and Indian workers at Wales are affected. It is disrespectful to the sugar workers – whatever their race – for government to be sermonizing this year about their contributions to Guyana and now to be shortchanging them in this way. It is not right.
The sugar company should approach the government formally to pay the workers, using the precedent of the all-purpose company at D’Urban Park. If the government refuses, then the sugar company should provide all the redundant workers with land in lieu of the payments due to them, with the right to sell such land to recover their severance.

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An insult to sugar workers!

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