Labour crisis erupts… Opposition parties, labour union demand criminal probes, sweeping worker protections

May 20, 2026 News

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(Kaieteur News) – The Assembly for Liberty and Prosperity (ALP), the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), and the Forward Guyana Movement have joined forces to demand urgent government intervention, criminal prosecutions, and sweeping reforms to Guyana’s labour and immigration oversight systems amid what they describe as a deepening crisis of worker exploitation.

In a series of public statements issued on Tuesday, the political and civic organisations sounded the alarm over an escalating national crisis involving what they term the “systemic exploitation” of both local and foreign workers. The coordinated backlash follows explosive revelations of human trafficking, hazardous working conditions, and the workplace death of a foreign national in Guyana’s interior.

The groups contend that recent revelations point to a dangerous, structural breakdown in regulatory enforcement rather than isolated labour disputes. In a public statement, the ALP detailed a growing ledger of documented worker abuse spanning the mining, extraction, and service sectors. Reports emerged on May 18 that 38 Indian nationals employed at the EKAA HRIM Earth Resources quarry in Batavia, Region Seven, had their passports confiscated by management. The workers were allegedly subjected to unpaid wages and threatened with a US$5,000 penalty if they attempted to flee the job site.

The ALP also raised issues that labourers at the Chinese-owned Zijin Mining Aurora Goldfield faced underpaid wages, a total lack of safety gear, contaminated food, and instances of workers collapsing underground, as documented late last years. The party noted too that law enforcement operations in February uncovered 77 Cuban nationals in Georgetown whose travel documents had been withheld. By May 5, two Cuban nationals were brought before local courts facing multiple human trafficking charges for allegedly seizing a woman’s passport and forcing her into commercial sex work.

“Under Guyana’s Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act, passport confiscation alone is a criminal offence,” the ALP stated. “No worker on Guyanese soil should be stripped of their freedom or dignity for someone else’s profit.”

The push for State accountability intensified following the recent death of an Indian national at the EKAA HRIM Earth Resources quarry in Region Seven. Although the company publicly asserted that the labourer suffered a fatal heart attack, the GTUC declared that the claim does not absolve the employer or State regulators from legal and moral scrutiny.

GTUC General Secretary Lincoln Lewis confirmed he has dispatched an urgent letter to Minister of Labour and Manpower Planning, Keoma Griffith, demanding a transparent, independent investigation under occupational health and safety laws.

“The time has come for the authorities to stop treating these matters casually,” Lewis warned. “Guyana cannot boast about economic growth and investment while workers, particularly foreign workers brought into this country, are potentially being placed in unsafe and exploitative conditions while State agencies look the other way.”

Lewis reminded the administration that Guyana is a signatory to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) core standards, which strictly guarantee safe environments and the protection of migrant workers.

While the Ministry of Labour has reportedly intervened at the Region Seven quarry to ensure the return of the workers’ passports, the Forward Guyana Movement stressed that a superficial fix is not enough. The movement called for an investigation entirely free from “political interference or corporate shielding.”

Furthermore, the organisation connected the breakdown in labour monitoring to broader national security and institutional anxieties. The group noted that the same opaque tracking systems that leave foreign labourers vulnerable to trafficking have previously forced them to confront the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) regarding the unexplained registration of Commonwealth nationals on the Official List of Electors. “A State has both the right to regulate migration and the duty to protect every person within its jurisdiction from exploitation, coercion, unsafe working conditions, and abuse,” the Forward Guyana Movement stated, adding that no individual should be reduced to “a tool of labour, politics, or profit.”

The combined fronts are calling on the Ministries of Labour, Home Affairs, and Natural Resources to publicly account for the isolation and danger faced by hinterland workers. The coalition’s immediate demands include immediate, transparent inquiries into all active allegations of labour abuse, with swift criminal charges pressed where evidence of trafficking exists, unannounced, proactive workplace safety and welfare checks to detect and halt exploitation before it occurs, strict oversight and vetting of all local and foreign recruitment agencies operating within Guyana and full legislative oversight regarding how the State manages labour mobility, migration records, and the human rights of workers under regional CARICOM obligations.

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• ALP, criminal prosecutions, Forward Guyana Movement, GTUC

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