…NICIL defends role in fallout with Caricom Cement
Following the sacking of 100 workers in the Caricom Cement factory, the unemployment woes in Berbice have taken a turn for the worse. But the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) is defending its role in the controversy.
NICIL owns the Everton, East Bank complex, formerly belonging to the Berbice Mining Enterprise Limited (BERMINE), on which the factory operates. NICIL Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Horace James on Wednesday told Guyana Times that Caricom Cement was more than two years behind in its rent payments.
NICIL CEO Horace James
“They (Caricom Cement) owed NICIL for over two years. NICIL terminated their contract and the matter is in court,” James related, in an interview on Wednesday. “So, we had terminated the contract and we had taken possession of the property, but the matter is now in court.”
He related that all this happened late in December, but that attempts are being made to reach arbitration. According to James, the company’s argument against NICIL is that termination of their lease was unlawful.
“They started to pay rent and then they just stopped for two years; that’s the fact,” James, who took over the helm of NICIL in March of last year, stated. Efforts to contact Caricom Cement management were futile.
Unemployment
Government had long announced plans to close the Enmore and Rose Hall Sugar Estates, sell the Skeldon Sugar Factory, reduce the annual production of sugar, and take on the responsibility of managing the drainage and irrigation services offered by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo).
Since then, Berbice has been thrown into turmoil with the divestment of a number of sugar estates, also being undertaken by NICIL’s Special Purpose Unit (SPU). This process has been accompanied by the retrenchment of thousands of sugar workers, who are yet to receive their severance payments.
In August 2017, after much discussion on unemployment on Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan had promised that Caricom Cement would employ 400 of the workers who were to be sent home from the Rose Hall Sugar Estate. However, the Rose Hall Estate has now closed
The Caricom Cement factory
and so has the Caricom Cement factory.
More than 100 persons attached to the cement company reached out to this publication on Monday, saying they were sent on the breadline some three months ago. According to the workers, they left work on October 8, 2017, as per normal and when they turned up for duty on October 9, they found a padlock on the gate. According to the workers, they were later informed that NICIL had padlocked the gates.
An employee of Caricom Cement, Moses Jaipaul, told this newspaper that the terminated employees all have bills to pay, but up until Monday they had not heard anything from either of the companies. Jaipaul had been employed with the company for three years.
The company had hired overseas experts and had developed a formula of making high-quality cement from a mixture of clay, paddy husk, sea shells, and bauxite overburden. In October 2017, the cement company was testing the local formula when the gates were locked, leaving the workers jobless.
The production of cement locally could have added growth to the Berbice economy in the manufacturing sector. Cement production would have put little strain on foreign exchange reserves, but would have added value to the agricultural industry.
