Unemployment woes
Some 100 Caricom Cement factory workers are on the breadline after the cement factory closed its doors.
In August 2017, after much discussion on unemployment on Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan had promised that Caricom Cement would employ 400 of the workers who were to be sent home from the Rose Hall sugar estate. However, the Rose Hall estate has now closed and so has the Caricom Cement factory.
Unemployed: Moses Jaipaul
The factory occupies the former Bermine Complex at Everton, East Bank Berbice, which is owned by the National Industrial & Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL).
More than 100 persons attached to the cement company reached out to this publication on Monday, saying they were sent on the breadline some three months ago.
According to the workers, they left work on October 8, 2017, as per normal and when they turned up for duty on October 9, they found a padlock on the gate. According to the workers, they were later informed that NICIL had padlocked the gates.
Guyana Times was told that Caricom Cement and NICIL are reportedly at odds over the compound. More than three months have passed and neither NICIL nor Caricom Cement has told the workers anything on the matter. Efforts by this newspaper to contact officials at NICIL over the issue proved futile.
An employee of Caricom Cement, Moses Jaipaul, told this publication the terminated employees all have bills to pay but have not heard anything from either of the companies. Jaipaul had been employed with the company for three years.
He told this publication that Minister Ramjattan’s words about further employment of workers still echo in his ears. The company, which initially started as a repackaging cement plant, has been in existence in Guyana for the past 14 years.
The company had hired overseas experts and had developed a formula of making high-quality cement from a mixture of clay, paddy husk, sea shells, and bauxite overburden. In October 2017, the cement company was testing the local formula when the gates were locked, and business closed down leaving the workers jobless.
The production of cement locally could have been one of the companies within the manufacturing industry to add growth to the Berbice economy.
Cement production would have put little strain on foreign exchange but would have added value to the agricultural industry.
