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Govt. to find $5B to pay severed sugar workers— Agri. Minister
– Berbice Chamber suggests lands for former employees
By Malisa Playter- Harry
The Central Corentyne Chamber together with other business people of the private sector met, yesterday, with the Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder at Black Bush Polder, Corentyne, Berbice to iron out several issues that are of concern to them.
One of the pivotal points in the meeting was discussions on the recent termination of 4,000 sugar workers in Berbice.
President of Central Corentyne Chamber of Commerce, Mohamed Raffik, told the Minister that the decision to hand out letters of termination to the workers “is very callous”.
When asked about the severance pay promised by the government, Minister Holder said that the Minister of Finance is presently “scraping to find the money” to be paid to the laid off sugar workers at the ending of January.
He explained that an estimated $5B has to be found for the severance payments.
Raffik stressed: “The government is not the private sector. If I have a business and it is not making money I will close it but the government has been voted to run the country. Financial consideration or profitability is important, but it’s not the only criterion the government has to look at. The government is not a businessman like us and could close a business.”
He was at the time referring to the closure of the estates throughout the country, particularly in Berbice where several hundreds of sugars workers are now jobless.
He said that the Chamber met with the Minister of Finance some time ago and suggested to the Minister that instead of closing the estates, to move along the line of privatisation.
“You just can’t send home 4,000 people and you have no solid alternative. The thing that bothered me very much was that nobody had the guts, no senior person had the inclination to meet with these people and tell them what it is.”
Raffik said he was disappointed with how Government went about the decision. He added that the option of lands being distributed to the laid-off workers should have been an alternative by the Government.
“Government should open up more lands so that more farming can be done, more people can plant rice, cash crops but everyone is talking about lands the government needs to invest in Berbice to open more lands. I don’t even know the government’s plans for these workers. What the government is going to do to create more employment in Region 6.”
In response to Raffik, Minister Holder said that over $16 Billion had to be pumped into GuySuCo to pay wages and salaries.
“All the money that GuySuCo is earning, about $90B per year, was not sufficient to pay these wages and salaries, it was terrible. So after we had a look at the Board and we saw that these factories were selling at a lower rate than they were producing we had to rationalise and decide to keep three estates,” Holder said.
The Minister interacting with the private sector yesterday.
Minister David Patterson
He said that it was not a decision made right away to have the estates closed but the GuySuCo management had met on several occasions with the workers during 2017 and had informed them of the decision and what is likely to take place.
The Minister revealed that the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority has since taken on the responsibility of all the drainage that GuySuCo was handling along with the staff in that area of skill. The Community Centres and its staff were all absorbed at the Ministry of Communities while the health centres and its staffer were absorbed by the Ministry of Public Health.
“So these are things that were done, the government is acting responsible,” Holder insisted.
Almost 4,000 sugar workers from the Rose Hall, Skeldon and Enmore Estates were handed redundancy letters making the end of December as the last day of work.
The meeting was organised by the Prime Minister’s Regional Representative of Berbice, Gobin Harbhajan.
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