Dear Editor,
It’s a unique piece of psychology whereby if you want to take away everything from someone, then go straight ahead and do it, so that when you throw some crumbs at them, they will grab it gleefully and bless you with all their heart. This is a type of psychological reactance and manipulation now meted out to the sugar workers.
Let me illustrate this. In the past, every year the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) and the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE) had bargained for increased wages and salaries and would go on strikes when their demands were not met. However, since the commission of inquiry, which recommended privatisation accompanied by veiled threats from the Government to close some estates, the unions have become deaf, dumb and blind. There is no further talk about wage increases. The focus has then been on keeping their jobs!
Moreover, the sugar workers, the unions and the Opposition were adamantly opposed to privatisation of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) therefore the Government proposed closure. The Wales Estate was closed. After this the Government proposed privatisation and this was accepted with open arms by the workers and their union. This proposal has now become a blessing according to Mr Ramjattan.
The next scenario concerns the redundancy of the workers and their severance payments. The Government and GuySuCo decided to terminate the employment of at least 5000 workers. No severance was offered. The union and the Opposition fought tooth and nail for the payment of the severance. The Government agrees to pay the severance but in installments. This satisfied the unions, both GAWU and NAACIE. It is agreed that the final installment will be paid six months after the first and that those workers entitled to severance below $500,000 will receive theirs in full. The fact is that 5000 workers have lost their jobs and that has now become irrelevant!
Now for the crème de la crème, the Government is now the savior of 11,000 jobs. They have not destroyed the livelihood of 5000 sugar workers but they have saved the jobs of 11,000 workers since they had the option to close the sugar industry and they did not. The Government is now capitalising on its failure to turn around the sugar industry after injecting more than $40 billion.
The sum of $40 billion is equivalent to the cost of the Skeldon factory. Moses Nagamootoo at the Rose Hall Estate outreach pontificated that the money spent on the Skeldon Modernisation Project could have been spent to make the other estates such as Albion, Rose Hall, Blairmont and others more efficient and profitable. So, the question for Nagamootoo is: Why after spending the same $40 billion on the industry it has to be closed and privatised? The Prime Minister is very poor with figures. He should try spinning words instead of figures!
Eventually after months in hiding, the Prime Minister and the Agriculture Minister mustered the courage to face the sugar workers at Skeldon and Rose Hall Estates where they received the way they should-with disapproval and protests. So, the ‘spin doctor’ went to work immediately. He lambasted the People’s Progressive Party for the failures of the sugar industry and began ‘selling dreams’ to the sugar workers. He painted a nice picture about the workers being trained to become entrepreneurs, their children will be trained to work in the oil and gas sector, the workers will be given loans from a fund of $100 million (this works out to 20 thousand dollars per worker), the sugar workers will be given one acre of land each to cultivate, they will be trained to do other skill jobs, and the list goes on.
Nagamootoo should understand that the Wales Estate was closed since December 2016 and the sugar workers and the surrounding areas are still reeling from the fallout. Will Skeldon and Rose Hall be any better? Sugar workers are not that naïve!
I listened to the Prime Minister at Rose Hall and was shocked at the venom he spewed and the vulgarity of his presentation. His ‘outreach’ was meant to appease the workers by explaining the way forward and to explain the measures to be put in place to ensure that they received their severance, but instead his vitriolic loaded speech did nothing to improve the image the sugar workers have about him.
On that day at Rose Hall, the pretensions fell apart as the true Nagamootoo emerged. Ironically it was at the same location where he pledged to ‘light a candle’ for the sugar workers!
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
RDC Councillor, Region Six
