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Sugar workers attached to NDIA to also lose their jobs – GAWU
More sugar workers are made redundant, GAWU says.
The largest sugar union, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), says that more employees are to be made redundant.
GAWU yesterday said it was informed by the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc (GuySuCo) that a large number of the several hundred workers retained at Skeldon, Rose Hall, East Demerara and Wales Estate, after the recent deluge of dismissals mere weeks ago, would soon be made additionally redundant.
“In fact, that sad process of informing the identified workers would begin some time soon with their redundancy becoming effective not too long from now,” GAWU explained.
According to GAWU, the workers were mainly retained as the sugar company was seeking to provide certain services to the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA).
“Dismayingly, that arrangement has fallen through and the workers are the hapless victims. The further expansion of the unemployed in the sugar belt is without a doubt making a really bad situation even worse. Given the absence of any plans to deal with the fallout from the miniaturisation of the industry and the fiasco that has surrounded the workers’ severance payment, this furthering retrenchment is heart-rending to say the least.”
The union said that it believes, from all appearances, the Government and GuySuCo are ill-prepared and clearly incapable of dealing with the consequences that have flowed from these callous decisions that they made.
“Our union believes that it’s still not too late to reverse the decisions and re-open the estates especially given the situation that we are seeing playing out with the workers at this time. We call on the Government as President David Granger reportedly said recently, to “put people before profits”.
GAWU believes that rather than displacing the workers, the NDIA could utilise the workers’ services and accordingly compensate GuySuCo.
“The Government needs to be constantly reminded; it would seem, of its responsibility to all its citizens, to safeguard their interests and to enhance their living standards along to the road to that promised ‘Good Life’. The treatment of thousands of workers in the sugar industry is certainly contrary to such a universally accepted practice.”
The statement of GAWU would be strong, coming on the heels of the approval last week by the National Assembly of almost $2B to pay sugar workers who lost their jobs.
Last week, GAWU and other stakeholders met Government on the way forward.
The unions want the closed estates- Rose Hall, Skeldon, Enmore and Wales- to be kept open.
Since taking office in 2015, the Coalition Government has stuck to its promises to restructure the sugar industry which had been receiving billions of dollars annually in bailouts.
The loss-making corporation has been selling its sugar for three times below its production cost. However, the previous administrations of the People’s Progressive Party had reportedly postponed recommendations for the closure of a number of under-performing estates.
The sugar industry is the country’s largest single employer but has been running a string of losses in the last decade, made worse by price cuts in its major European market and the loss of preferential price right in that market.
In Guyana, the administration has established a Special Purpose Unit to overlook the privatisation and divestment process of the market.
More than 4,000 workers of the four closed estates have already lost their jobs in the last 13 months with that number expected to soar to about 5,000.
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