Even as more than 300 rice farmers are threatened with lease revocation at Hope Estate unless they pay a 300 per cent increase in lease payments, more sugar workers are staring at loss of employment in the coming months. The so-called champion of the sugar workers has gone from silence to outright, despicable lying as they for the first time in over a year face the sugar workers in their communities in an obvious, sordid PR stunt; a stunt that only reinforced their traitor epithet. They have betrayed the sugar workers and the sugar workers know that.
The A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change’s (APNU/AFC) messengers of ill-tidings in their PR blitz blamed the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and God for closure of sugar estates and loss of employment. APNU/AFC sent the ones who identified themselves pre-2015 election as the champion of the sugar workers to meet with sugar workers and explain to them why it was necessary to close sugar estates. Really, no joke, they told the sugar workers it was the PPP and God to be blamed for closure of sugar estates and the end of employment for thousands of sugar workers. The excuses made by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Security who are both Vice Presidents might sound like a bad joke, but they were nothing less than ludicrous and reprehensible.
Ramjattan wins the price for the most preposterous of the lies APNU/AFC has provided for closing estates. He claims that God wanted sugar to close in exchange for giving Guyana oil, that God took away sugar from us because he wanted to give us oil. This senior lawyer, an MP for more than 20 years, a Public Security Minister and a Vice President, was so desperate to give an excuse that he resorted to blaming God. He ignored that Guyana confirmed an oil find before the election 2015, at a time when the PPP was providing a blueprint for a larger sugar industry. God’s bounty of oil resulted because President Janet Jagan and the PPP signed the EXXON contract that eventually identified oil fields in our territory. There was never any wicked deal between God and Guyana to give up sugar for oil.
Nagamootoo’s explanation was as usual – premised on a despicable lie. He claimed that the PPP intended to and had initiated the closure of the sugar estates. In his desperation to find some way of extricating himself and APNU/AFC, he invoked the tired and ugly PPP bogey man excuse. In fact, the PPP had promised that had they return to Government they would have invested $20 billion annually for its new term to ensure that sugar returned to its glory days. The PPP provided a blueprint to not only keep all the sugar estates open, but to expand production to 300,000 tons by 2020 and to work towards 400,000 tons of sugar and a diversified commodity portfolio, including production of bio-ethanol and energy. To claim that APNU/AFC is now just implementing a plan of the PPP is a blatant and preposterous lie.
It is now more than 30 months since APNU/AFC has been in control of the Government. In that time, four sugar estates have been closed and more than 7000 workers employed by the Guyana Sugar Corporation and by private farmers have lost their jobs. In that time, sugar workers have not been given a wage increase for 2015, 2016 and 2017 and APNU/AFC is making it clear that there would be no wage increase for 2018 also. It would be four successive years of zero wage increases, an unprecedented period of time for a wage freeze. In that time also, the workers were denied their legal right to Annual Production Incentives (API). Fired workers have been denied timely and full payment of their severance. Throughout all of this, APNU/AFC avoided any engagement with the workers. Nagamootoo and Ramjattan hid from the workers. They drove past them in their luxurious convoy of vehicles.
Finally, Nagamootoo and Ramjattan, more than 30 months in Government, were forced to engage the workers. It was nothing short of a desperate PR game. They did not go voluntarily. They were shamed into going and APNU/AFC needed to show some concern and sensitivity for ripping apart the livelihoods of more than 7000 workers after the closure of four sugar estates. They entered into the grounds of the sugar workers and their families, they entered in shame and left even more disgraced. They entered as traitors and they left carrying the albatross of betrayal which they will carry with them to their graves. This will be their epithets.
