The Guyana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) on Thursday distributed bursary awards to nine of their members’ children who would have performed outstandingly at the recent National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA).
Recipients of the bursary awards and their parents at the GAWU headquarters
At a simple ceremony at their Kingston, Georgetown headquarters, the students were congratulated for their hard work and bestowed with a prize.
General Secretary of the Union, Seepaul Narine explained that these persons were selected from the Demerara branch after various requirements were analysed. These activities will be followed by a similar distribution exercise in Berbice on Saturday.
“Every year, we normally do this function where we award students who are the best among our members. Here, we are doing the Demerara bursaries and then on Saturday, we will do a similar presentation for our comrades in Berbice. You have a new beginning that is going to be much more challenging. This is the beginning of a new road of harder work”.
GAWU President Komal Chand explained that because of the downsizing of the sugar industry, less students were eligible for bursary awards after the various criteria were taken into consideration.
“This is something we had started some years ago. Unfortunately, we have closure of estates. In the case of Demerara, we had Wales estate and Enmore. Then we had the closure of a private company used to process fish products. And then we have two estates in Berbice, Rose Hall and Skeldon that were closed. The fact that our membership is smaller now than before, naturally we’ll have less bursaries when we take and apply the rules,” Chand noted.
“We have recognised your performance and we feel that this activity will encourage you to continue on your journey to higher education in your country. Of course, we can’t fail to recognise your parents”, he encouraged the students.
