Sugar workers across Guyana will not be given their expected Annual Production Incentives (API) for 2016, a convention which dates back 64 years. This revelation comes despite Government’s announcement that it intends to award a billion bailout for the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) to aid the cash-strapped sugar industry.
Winston jordan
However, in his presentation of Budget 2017 to the National Assembly earlier this week, Finance Minister Winston Jordan suggested that money injected into the sugar industry, in its current state, is money wasted and further opined that it would make no impact on the operating losses and cash deficit status of the industry.
But the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) thinks otherwise and has stated its disdain for the move to deny workers API, noting that the payment, issued since 1952, was continued even after the industry was nationalised 40 years ago.
“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. GAWU once again registered its annoyance over a lack of extensive consultations from the Sugar Corporation over workers’ API and claimed that GuySuCo hurriedly told it in a meeting last month that the Corporation’s financial position prevents issuing API.
According to GAWU, the Corporation wrote to the Union seeking the basis of its claim and in response, the Union pointed out that its claim is related to whatever quantity of sugar is produced, as is always, and no other factor. Following, GAWU’s response, the Corporation on November 24, 2016, engaged the Union in a session.
GuySuCo’s lead person at the meeting, apparently, was in a hurry to convey to the Union’s delegation from the estates and Union officials that the company’s financial position precluded any API award. Furthermore, GuySuCo advised that its position was consistent with its no pay rise position this year.
Last year, the Corporation did not increase workers’ wages and salaries, however, it awarded a mere 2.72 days’ pay as API.
The Union further opined that the denial of the incentives to workers is “cruel” in nature.
“No wage rise for 2015 and 2016 and no API in 2016 constitute a blatant assault on the 18,000 sugar workers and represent a most crude and cruel treatment of the workers. No Government since independence in 1966 has ever been so unfair to the sugar workers. Such measures, as myriad experiences have shown, will not augur well for the industry. The turnaround of the industry is not being promoted but an aggravation of the industry’s problems and, sadly, a degradation of the well-being of its employees, our fellow citizens, lives,” GAWU pointed out.
It added that these “obnoxious and counter-productive” steps could be avoided.
“A Government and a State corporation that is really concerned about its people and its workers would seek to overcome any such ‘hurdle’ as was done up to 2014 by the then Government/GuySuCo hierarchy,” the Union further opined.
In the Finance Minister’s presentation on Monday the $250 billion budget, it was reported to the House that sugar has in fact recorded a dismal performance this past year and it is projected to decline further in the coming year.
According to Minister Jordan, the status quo of the sugar industry can neither be sustained nor maintained. He further told the House that as currently structured, the industry would require Government’s support to the tune of $18.6 billion and $21.4 billion for the years 2017 and 2018, respectively.
