Hundreds of sugar workers from the now defunct Wales Estate continue to agitate for the payout of their entitled severance packages, but discrepancies over Government’s position on the payout have surfaced through contradictory utterances made by senior Government officials.
GAWU President Komal Chand
President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), Komal Chand, told Guyana Times on Saturday that Government ministers have expressed differing positions on the severance pay matter from the position articulated by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo).
“The Agriculture Minister [Noel Holder] said the people got their severance pay; GuySuCo said they are required to take up work at Uitvlugt; and now Minister Khemraj Ramjattan (has) said, ‘Okay, we can’t find the money to pay them.’ So it’s contradicting what they said,” Chand noted.
Minister Ramjattan had on Friday told sugar workers assembled for a meeting with Government ministers at the Wales Community Centre on the West Bank of Demerara that Government could not afford to payout some $375 million in severance pay. His disclosure prompted an immediate exodus of angry sugar workers from the meeting with Government ministers and GuySuCo officials.
At the meeting, to which GAWU was not invited, according to Chand, Ramjattan had said: “Those that got the severance payment at the appropriate time, we had to pay $339 million in severance payment. GuySuCo is practically bankrupt; the figure now for those who would want (severance payment) is going to be $375 million more.”
Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan
In an interview with Guyana Times on Saturday, GAWU President Komal Chand, a long-time sugar representative and Opposition Member of Parliament (MP), stressed that the workers have to be paid what they are owed. “The point remains that the people are entitled legally to their pay, and GAWU is following up that matter to ensure that workers get their pay,” he stressed.
He disclosed that GAWU’s legal team is currently preparing to pursue litigation at the High Court in an effort to seek redress for the workers’ benefits. The legal team includes Senior Counsel Ashton Chase, who is a noted expert on industrial law, and former Legal Affairs Minister and Attorney General, Anil Nandlall.
And commenting on Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo’s statement: that he would not see sugar die, Chand explained that workers at the remaining estates would learn from the experience of their colleagues at Wales.
“The Prime Minister is trying to be not truthful. He knows that sugar is significantly impaired by the decision to close [Wales Estate] and two other (estates), and to sell out the Skeldon Estate. To say that sugar wouldn’t die is not realistic. It’s deception to justify all these anti-working class, unconscionable decisions by this Government,” he noted.
At a community-level meeting between Wales residents and Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder, Minister of State Joseph Harmon, Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan, and Public Telecommunications Minister Cathy Hughes, the workers stormed out of the meeting after being told by the panel that Government had no money to pay the severance to which the workers are entitled.
At that meeting, one worker had explained that he had gone to work at the Uitvlugt Estate, only to be given menial tasks, or alternately told to clean drains or scrub steps. The worker expressed great emotion over his impoverished state since the closure of the estate.
Ministers Hughes and Ramjattan had reminded the crowd of the billions which have been invested into GuySuCo since the Government had taken office.
Against the backdrop of claims that there is no fiscal space, sugar workers have reminded the Ministers that in 2015 they had taken a retroactive raise of pay, in some cases by 50 per cent. In response, Ramjattan had retorted that the amount they had paid themselves, a figure he put at $28 million, was too small to compare with what was now required to address the issue of severance payment.
Many workers have been without severance packages since December 2016, and they have long stressed that they want to move on with their lives.
“Our biggest concern is that the Minister of Agriculture declared that Wales Estate would be closing on 31 December (2016), so people need to move on with their lives. You close the estate, you giving one set of people severance and you denying the cane harvesters severance. The people have mortgages, families, (and) they have things to do,” a sugar worker had noted outside of the meeting.
Government had, in early 2016, announced the end of sugar operations at Wales Estate, citing cost as the main factor for its closure. It was later disclosed that rice would be planted as part of the estate’s diversification plans, but at present no rice has been reaped. As recently as on March 10, 2017, Wales cane harvesters, transporters and their families have staged a protest outside of the Ministry of the Presidency. They then moved to outside of the National Assembly, where a sitting of the country’s legislators was in progress.
