2016 API non-payment
In light of the Guyana Sugar Corporation’s reported intention to not pay sugar workers their expected Annual Production Incentive (API) for 2016, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) has sought redress, tapping the Social Protection Ministry for help in that regard.
Winston Jordan
In an interview with Guyana Times on Monday, the Union’s General Secretary, Seepaul Narine confirmed that GAWU has applied to the Ministry for reconciliation talks with GuySuCo to advocate for a reversal of the decision to not pay out the API.
“There is supposed to be a hearing, [but] we are waiting on the Ministry to confirm a date,” the General Secretary told this publication.
Regarding the final countdown to the December 31 closure of Wales Sugar Estate, Narine explained that as far as the Union was aware, the plan would go forward to discontinue sugar operations at the entity. It was, however, suggested that GAWU was still in the dark about the Sugar Corporation’s plans to subsume workers into the new ventures that the Estate would undertake under the conversion plans.
“They haven’t said anything to us; they are not engaging us, they are not meeting so we don’t know what are their plans,” the General Secretary disclosed.
He further stated that with only weeks to go before the shutting down of Wales, he advocated by way of a letter, that GuySuCo met with GAWU to engage in discussions. Narine reiterated that “over 1700 people” would lose their jobs, thus affecting hundreds more – their family members. He added that communities and businesses in the surrounding environs would also be affected.
The GAWU General Secretary also highlighted the dispirited outlook for the future of the country’s sugar industry.
“There is no certainty, because there are different things that have been said: that Skeldon will be sold, that the factory at Rose Hall will be closed and, therefore, the Providence section will be closed,” he noted.
GAWU last week announced that GuySuCo reportedly broke with a 64-year tradition by not paying sugar workers their 2016 API. In fact, the Union observed that even when the sector was nationalised, the payments continued.
“This incentive to a section of the productive workforce continued after nationalisation which took place under the Administration of LFS. Burnham who assured the workers on Vesting Day – May 26, 1976 – that their ‘conditions of employment shall not be less favourable’,” the Union stated on Wednesday last.
The revelation of the supposed non-payment comes despite Finance Minister Winston Jordan’s announcement that Government intended to provide a $9 billion bailout for GuySuCo to aid the cash-strapped sugar industry. However, in his presentation of Budget 2017 to the National Assembly, Jordan had suggested that money injected into the industry, in its current state, was money wasted and further opined that it would make no impact on the operating losses and cash deficit status of the sector. (Shemuel Fanfair)
