…about Sugar Workers
The PNC-led APNU/AFC Government has plunged a knife into the body of sugar workers at Rose Hall, after it had told them it wouldn’t close the factory for another year. Without warning, however, just as with Wales at the end of 2016, 400 workers were informed – through letters – they were fired! And more letters have been prepared.
Just like that – just before Christmas! It has to take a special kind of disdain for sugar workers, in general, and those at Rose Hall in particular – amounting to seeing them as chattel – to fire hundreds of workers when Guyanese of all backgrounds and religious persuasions look forward to a “Merry” Christmas. Surely the PNC-led Government and the Board of GuySuCo cannot be blind to the Stygian despair into which these workers and their families have been plunged?
But it’s not moral blindness at work –- just cold, Machiavellian revenge, which your Eyewitness was informed, “is best served cold”, in the words of the master. Back in 1976, after sugar workers struck for 135 days to demand recognition for GAWU – the longest strike in the history of the country – the PNC promptly closed down Leonora, the most militant estate. Not coincidentally, it was also solidly PPP. And it’s no coincidence that in this iteration of closures in sugar, Rose Hall has been very militant in demanding the present PNC-led Government not close the single industry that keeps the entire Canje alive.
The PNC-Government is sending a signal to PPP supporters that it will deal with them “condignly” after their resistance. It’s more than ironic that at the beginning of the year, President Granger declared March 13 as “Rose Hall Martyrs Day” because: “The Colonial Police killed 15 sugar workers on March 13, 1913, at Plantation Rose Hall. The workers had formed a group to protest (working conditions)…Sugar workers participated in the development of the economy, the pillar of which was sugar. On Rose Hall Martyrs’ Day, it is hoped that the martyrs’ supreme sacrifice would remain an inspiration to Guyanese.”
As usual, it was just nice-sounding platitudes expected from Granger. But what about Moses Nagamootoo’s message on Martyrs’ Day to the people of Berbice, on whose support he’s gotten his job and mega perks: “Today, we pay tribute to the courage of the Rose Hall Martyrs, and commit ourselves to respect and continue their struggles. We reflect solemnly on March 13, 1913 and hope that we could be inspired by the courage of our ancestors to move our country to higher levels of human existence, in their memory and as a tribute to their sacrifice.”
Firing 400 workers is a “tribute”?
…about the Constitution
How many times can we allow President Granger to disrespect the Constitution before he’s called out, like Trump, by the representatives of the National Assembly who can begin impeachment proceedings? The Constitution is the sacred document encapsulating the rules and laws that direct all of us – including the President – in the “rule of law and not of men”. But President Granger, like his hero Burnham, clearly sees himself above the Constitution,
His previous traducings of the Constitution – such as with his unilateralism on the GECOM Chair insertion – seems to have emboldened him to such an extent, he’s now openly contemptuous of its strictures. Why else wouldn’t he comply with Justice George’s ruling on his interference with the Police Service Commission?
Waiting for a WRITTEN version? What nonsense! The Constitution’s very clear that no one – including the President – can usurp the functions of Constitutional Commissions in general, and from our history and precedents, the PSC in particular.
Where will citizens draw the line on the transgressions?
