Enough is enough. Pay the sugar workers their severance, without any further delays. Visiting many of the communities with closed sugar estates, workers without jobs and their families asked if there is any news about their severance and when they would be paid. We are justifiably ashamed that firefighters stole people’s belongings during a recent crash-landing event. It is equally disgraceful that our country is robbing sugar workers of their severance. The violation of the labour laws, depriving these sugar workers of all they have, is highway robbery.
I will never tire calling out the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) for ignoring and punishing poor sugar workers. I cannot and no decent Guyanese can forgive APNU/AFC for ripping away the jobs of poor sugar workers; people whose family depended on these jobs. That brutality is further compounded by the refusal to obey the law and pay the workers who were terminated their severance. For some of these workers, it has been more than two years, for others it has been a year, since APNU fired them and now, adding salt to the wounds, denying them their severance.
Under pressure and the world watching, President Granger two months ago promised the workers that they would be paid as soon as Parliament reconvened in October. The workers could have been paid the severance without Parliament’s first meeting, but Parliament was used as a cover. It has been over a month since Parliament reconvened and passed a supplementary budget to pay the sugar workers. A Judge ordered the immediate payment of the workers with a six per cent interest up to November 2 and four per cent for every additional day after that. But the sugar workers are still waiting. It is unconscionable, uncaring and a total continued violation of the law.
We suspected that the promise to pay sugar workers their severance was a Local Government Election gimmick. There is no earthly reason why these sugar workers are being treated so cruelly. It is not just the thousands of sugar workers who are owed more than $2.5 billion, and another $200 million in interest, it is the almost 30,000 family members that are being assaulted daily by the APNU/AFC’s cruelty. The APNU/AFC knowingly and deliberately are violating national and international laws and are now in contempt of a court order. Parliament has appropriated the money, but the Finance Ministry is silent. The Agriculture Ministry – the Ministry with responsibility for the Guyana Sugar Corporation and sugar, is missing in action (MIA)/absent without leave (AWOL).
Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, who once deemed himself the ‘Sugar Workers’ Champion’, the one who these days lives on cloud-nine, with a siren-blazing convoy prancing around the country, is silent. The sugar workers are of no interest to him anymore. He has gotten what he wanted – he is the Prime Minister, even though he has no duty to perform, other than huffing and puffing about Bharrat Jagdeo. He has zero compassion for sugar workers and their families who are struggling and the children who are starving. His colleagues, like Khemraj Ramjattan and Charandass Persaud, people who visited and made wild promises to sugar workers before the 2015 General Elections, have also disappeared and are also silent.
Other than Guyana Times and the Weekend Mirror, the media has been mostly silent, reduced to periodically reporting on the sugar workers brave and persistent fight for their rights. Not a single editorial has addressed this injustice. Media commentators have largely ignored the plight of the sugar workers. The ABC countries rightfully have advocated for the abolishing of the death penalty and have even authored op-eds about copyright laws. But not one of them has mentioned the injustice foisted on the sugar workers. The Private Sector whose businesses have been affected by the closure of estates and the impoverishing of sugar workers have chosen silence.
The non-payment of severance is just one of the cruel assaults on the sugar workers. APNU/AFC had promised these sugar workers a 20 per cent annual wage increase before the 2015 elections. Since then, they have frozen sugar worker wages. There has been zero increases for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 promises another year of no wage increase. The five-year zero wage increase is now one of the global anti-workers shame for Guyana. But APNU/AFC also promised sugar workers better production incentives; the workers have not had any annual production incentives. They were promised by David Granger and Nagamootoo and the whole APNU/AFC that no estate will be closed; four estates have been closed. The sugar workers have been betrayed and now they are being robbed.
