GuySuCo’s inability to produce a sufficient quantity of canes

Dear Editor,
The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) sees it necessary to respond to a letter by the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc (GuySuCo) which appeared in the local press on October 12, 2017 under the title “GAWU must refocus on the business of sugar”.
The company’s spokeswoman accused our Union of having no responsibility. We expected GuySuCo to be wiser than this. Seemingly, the Corporation is slipping, or maybe has run out of things to say. Any rational person can see right through GuySuCo’s ill-considered statement.
Our Union has a proud record which attests to its responsible, principled, and forthright stance on matters. These facts very much throw cold water on the Corporation’s baseless and unsubstantiated statement. But this is the face of the ‘new GuySuCo’ our Union and the workers must now-a-days contend with.
Though it is well known, we wish to make it clear as day that the GAWU is very much aware of its foremost moral and legal responsibility — to ensure that the workers’ rights, conditions, and benefits are respected, and not trampled upon. We do not need a condescending lecture from GuySuCo.
We also wish to repeat that we remain open to discuss matters of concern with the Corporation. We have never shirked from any such engagements. But moving in this direction would require the Corporation to abandon its arm’s length approach to the Union, which it adopted since October, 2015, when we began to press for a pay rise for sugar workers for year 2015.
The Corporation’s officer, in our view, sought to put an ignoble spin on things when she sought to address the delay in paying the workers’ wages on September 15.
The Corporation goes on expressing its disquiet over the workers’ protest activities to demand the payment of their wages. We ask what is wrong with workers demanding what they worked for, is rightfully theirs, and which they justifiably require to make ends meet?
Just a few months ago, quite correctly, several teachers picketed outside of the Region #5 office, demanding payment of their salaries, which were withheld. Those teachers were not criticized by the Ministry of Education or the Government. We ask why the sugar workers should receive different treatment. But, again, it serves to further expose the contempt held by the Corporation’s hierarchy towards the workers, their concerns, and their plight.
The missive then comes to the core of the matter in continuing to lay the groundwork to blame the workers and the Union for the very poor production level which is anticipated this year. In recent times, the GAWU has drawn attention to this propaganda ploy by GuySuCo as it seeks to shift blame and find a scapegoat for its utter failures. Ms Thomas rightly says, “More sugar that is produced and sold, the more it will alleviate the Corporation’s financial dilemma”. This succinct statement very much sums up the Corporation’s problems – its inability to produce a sufficient quantity of canes. The fact remains that the Corporation does not have the canes in the fields to reach its targets. How else does one explain that the production target has shifted from about 200,000 tonnes sugar at the beginning of the year to around 175,000 tonnes sugar in or around July, 2017, and which most likely will be about 150,000 tonnes when production ceases at year-end?

Yours truly,
Seepaul Narine
General Secretary
GAWU