92 Berbice sugar workers protest cutting cane, weeding field

Aug 29, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – Some 92 cleaners from Albion, Rose Hall and Port Mourant estates are calling on the management of GuySuCo and high authorities to reconsider a decision made to move them from the unit to execute other works such as weeding and cutting cane.

Re-cleaners attached to the Berbice sugar estates last Friday protested poor working conditions

The workers were told that there was no money available to pay them to execute the re-cleaning work which consists of the cleaning of the canals for the clear passage of punts. As a result, the workers are upset over the decision and staged a protest last Friday morning at the Albion Estate, calling for the intervention of government.

One worker who said he is attached to the annex at Rose Hall Estate told this newspaper that he and another colleague were told by the superintendent that: “We have to do weed and relief work and we are re-cleaner at Rose Hall. We demand re-cleaning work, they said this come from higher management and they can’t do nothing. They also want us to cut cane, plant cane, and clean punt. This is three day now we deh out here and nobody na meet with we.”

One of the protesters last Friday

The worker said he has been cleaning the canals for eight years and prefers to continue doing that since it is what he knows his body is capable of. He also stressed that having other work allocated to them will mean they are required to do a more difficult job with very little pay. “This is taking bread out of people mouth,” he posited.

Winston Dey, 47, another worker who has been doing re-cleaning for 11 years said he had to be rushed to the estate dispensary after he was put in the field to weed. “It is not fair to us because we entitled to do 300 rods per day and when they take us out we cannot do the amount of work we were supposed to do, so right now it hard for us.”

Meanwhile, a Guyana Agricultural Workers Union representative attached to Berbice, Harvey Tombron ,told reporters that based on the information provided to him by senior officials at the estate, “NDIA who is to fund GuySuCo the money to pay to re-cleaners, they stop the funding and so this left us in shock because obviously management would have been able to know beforehand that the funds are being depleted and there would be no money to pay these workers.”

He stated that while it is puzzling as to how the money has suddenly depleted, at the end of the day it is the workers that are affected. “The canals are getting worse and they have to clean the canals whenever that activity resumes. They are tasked with cleaning 300 rods for a pick-up, a day’s pay and when the canals get bad that is not being reduced…the estate knows the cleaning of the canals is important because when you have the punts going in there, that ram punt is servicing the cane harvesters, we have fertilizer punt going through the canals, that is the fertilizing gang will be affected, planting gang will be affected, cane punts will have to use it. Why now seize the operations?”

He went on to argue that billions of dollars is being pumped into the sugar industry but yet there is no provision for workers such as the re-cleaners. “At the end of the day these people live from pay cheque to pay cheque and somebody needs to pay attention to these workers. There is a welfare department at every estate and they ought to see what is interfering with the workers.” $3.5 Billion was injected into GuySuCo recently and was done through the approval of the Agriculture Ministry under the supplementary budget.