On several occasions President David Granger explicitly declared he will not allow sugar to be a “burden on the country”, a message very different from his pre-2015 election promise of no closure for sugar. The Alliance For Change (AFC) just this past week called the closure and the termination of more than 6000 jobs “wise and fearless” leadership. As if closure of four sugar estates and the loss of more than 6000 jobs were not enough, they have denied timely and full payments of severance to the hurting workers and now two more threats are becoming realities – hundreds more sugar workers from Rose Hall and Skeldon are this week being terminated and word from inside sources tell of the sickening plan to close the Uitvlugt Sugar Estate by the end of 2018. The A Partnership for National Unity (APNU)/AFC must come clean – tell us definitively that no more workers will be terminated and no more estates are being closed.
Even as the injustice against sugar workers and their families are being ruthlessly implemented, President Granger, Prime Minister (PM) Moses Nagamootoo and others in the APNU/AFC are shamelessly trying to change the narrative, boasting about their “generosity” of “scraping up” $1.5 billion for paying the 4000 recently terminated sugar workers part of their severance. Let it be clear – the partial severance payments to the terminated sugar workers which APNU/AFC promised before the end of January is not a favour to sugar workers and it has nothing to do with the generosity of this APNU/AFC Government. The payment is an obligation under the labour laws of Guyana. It is a constitutional right of the terminated workers and it is a constitutional mandate of the Government to pay this severance. The payout of about $1.5 billion (a sum approved by Parliament last week), only 50 per cent of the severance payment, is a total violation of the law.
The APNU/AFC is not only breaching the laws of Guyana, but also a total contravention of the International Labour Organisation’s code. For the cynics who argue that the promised part-payment is at least “better than nothing”, is an insult; not only to sugar workers, but to all workers. Today it is the sugar workers’ misfortune, but who knows which group of workers will be next. The “at least it is better than nothing” argument cannot change the fact that the law is openly and arrogantly being violated. This is not “generosity”, it meanness.
A few weeks ago, in another narrative-changing effort and an ugly distortion of the truth, the Agriculture Minister chastised the media, the sugar unions and the Opposition party, claiming more than 9000 sugar workers jobs have been preserved. It was not just an arrogant claim; it was clearly a shameless effort to distract people from the ugly truth that almost 6000 workers have lost their jobs. That is why we have this obligation for the Government to find about $5 billion to pay severance. In trying to distract people from the workers who lost their jobs, he pointed to some workers who were being employed to work with the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA). It turns out this was a hoax and the truth is that even those workers are now terminated.
Now I noticed APNU/AFC is engaged in another purposeful distortion, arguing that Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) are now convinced that APNU/AFC is doing the “wise” thing in downsizing and closing sugar. This weird misrepresentation comes on the heel of the Opposition Leader announcing that the PPP would rather have privatisation than the permanent closure of the sugar estates. This in no way indicates that the PPP supports the closure and downsizing of sugar. It is just that given the present dispensation where APNU/AFC has closed four estates and terminated 6000 jobs, the PPP is pursuing the next practical option to keep sugar alive and to ensure jobs are available for thousands of people. A privatised-estate is a better option than a permanently-closed estate. Bravo to the Leader of the Opposition for embracing the interest of the workers, while APNU/AFC is playing politics.
