President Irfaan Ali announced healthcare workers would receive two weeks’ bonus pay this year. These health workers have been in the forefront fighting COVID-19. Originally, the PPP Government had set aside $150M in this year’s budget to provide a bonus for those health workers who directly cared for COVID-19 patients, but after listening to the plea of health workers, that all health workers deserve consideration; and after hearing the demand from the GPSU, that the bonus should apply to ALL public sector health workers, the President and the PPP Government agreed to find additional funding so that every public sector health worker would receive a bonus equivalent to two weeks’ pay.
Given the special circumstances, wherein the Government lost five months because the previous APNU+AFC Government illegally held on to office; and given that the bulk of the 2020 budget was already mostly illegally spent by APNU+AFC before the PPP Government took office, it is a remarkable effort to show the Government’s gratitude to the health workers.
The President’s action immediately caused Volda Lawrence and other senior APNU+AFC members to wake up from their slumber to demand health workers must receive no less than a one-month “compassionate payment”. Ms. Lawrence was the Minister in charge of health when COVID-19 burst on the scene in Guyana. For months, these health workers were begging for support. Ms. Lawrence and her President ignored the workers. Ms. Cathy Hughes was also a senior Minister in that Government. She now says the two-week bonus pay is an insult to the workers, but she never uttered a single word when, for months, these health workers were ignored by her Government. Not only were the health workers ignored by APNU+AFC throughout the period between March and August, when COVID-19 was spreading across the country; all workers, all families, were ignored. David Granger, Volda Lawrence, Cathy Hughes and others were too busy trying to rig the March 2020 elections. Their concern was about keeping power at any cost, the workers and their families were collateral damage, no concern to APNU+AFC.
It is not just these senior APNU+AFC members who were silent for all that time while the health workers were risking their lives, the workers’ own union was deadly silent. The GPSU silently, impotently slumbered while the Granger-led APNU+AFC betrayed health workers yet again. They are suddenly awake out of their deep slumber. They want more for the workers, but when they were in charge, the workers were utterly ignored.
Not only had the workers never received any financial support during months of fighting COVID-19, but they combated the virus without personal protective equipment. That all changed in August. The new PPP Government found resources to procure and ensure adequate supply of PPE. The new Government ensured COVID-19 testing was available for workers who were at high risk. In addition, the Government has provided a $25,000 cash grant for every household. Now the Government is giving every health worker a two-week bonus.
But the slumber of APNU+AFC and GPSU was not just during those months between March and August when COVID-19 was busy germinating itself across Guyana, these people were in a deep slumber since May 2015. For five years, they abandoned and betrayed the workers. They promised the workers heaven on earth before 2015, then when they got into Government, they promptly betrayed the workers. The APNU+AFC ministers gave themselves obscenely hefty salary and benefit increases, some of more than a 100%. Moses Nagamootoo, in one of his absurd defences, told workers “their time will come”. But the big pay increases they promised the workers during the 2015 election campaign never materialised. The annual bonus they promised public servants was never again discussed, it was shelved away. The annual bonus the joint services received for more than a decade under a previous PPP Government was shamelessly terminated.
APNU+AFC’s legacy is one of total workers’ betrayal. Almost 40,000 workers lost their jobs between 2015 and 2020, led by the more than 8,000 sugar workers who lost their jobs because APNU+AFC closed four sugar estates. It was during that time that APNU+AFC signed a contract with EXXON that never protected the rights of Guyanese workers. For five years, they heaped more and more taxes on the backs of workers. In that five years, not a single APNU+AFC Minister was concerned about the workers, not one of them remembered they promised big increases and annual bonuses. In those five years, the GPSU was in such deep slumber that many wondered if that union had died.
But the same people who forgot the workers for five years; the same ones who took away the bonus from the Police and soldiers; the same ones who forgot their promise of an annual bonus for all public servants; the same ones who forgot they promised sugar workers and other workers a 20% annual increase; the same ones who promised rice farmers $9,000 per bag paddy; the same ones who caused the loss of more than 40,000 jobs; they are now suddenly wide awake. President Irfaan Ali’s siding with workers has jolted APNU+AFC and the GPSU awake, and doing what they do best – the GREAT PRETENDERS.
