After almost nine months since the shutdown of the Wales Sugar factory, several employees are coping with life without having being paid their severance benefits. This matter was filed by the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) in the High Court some five months ago but is yet to be called up for proceedings in which legal arguments would be heard on both sides. Sugar worker Vishnu Jailall, on behalf of his fellow unpaid employees, sent a signed petition to President David Granger, in late July urging him to ensure that the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) meets its legal obligations to provide the aggrieved workers with their severance benefits.
The letter that the workers sent to the President in late July
In the letter, Jailall contended that the payments should be paid as the Corporation had made the workers’ jobs redundant. In the petition signed by over 30 other cane cutters and transporters, the former employees observed the benefits the sugar production has given to the country. They cited the challenges they have faced, since they had not taken up employment at Uitvlugt.
“We have peacefully requested our severance pay and our Union has applied for same legitimately but the Corporation has refused to pay us the same. This is a breach of law,” a section of the petition stated.
Sugar workers signed a petition calling on the President to intervene in their severance matter
President Granger in a responding letter to the petition in early August acknowledged the concerns of the workers and observed that Agriculture Minister Noel Holder would have tendered a response to the former employees.
“I have forwarded the request to the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Noel Holder, for his attention. The Minister will examine the request and respond to you,” an excerpt from the President’s August 8 letter stated.
However, in an interview with Guyana Times earlier this week, Jailall explained that Minister Holder has not followed through with the President’s commitment.
Several workers had their service transferred to Uitvlugt Sugar Estate but the remaining workers were promised severance payments; some since December 2016 and others by February 2017. After this period elapsed, GuySuCo contended that all of the workers who requested severance were paid. As such, the workers who did not agree to accept their severance within the stipulated timeframe have not been paid and were supposedly “left in the wilderness”, as described by GAWU’s General Secretary, Seepaul Narine.
Workers formerly attached to the Wales Estate have long contended that they cannot be compelled to travel beyond 10 miles from their previous working place and had demanded severance. However at a community-level meeting between Wales residents and several Government Ministers, including Agriculture Minister Noel Holder, Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan told the worker earlier this year that Government had no money to pay the severance to which the workers are entitled.
In May, Guyana Times reported that attorney for GAWU, Ashton Chase SC, compiled and filed documents for the matter regarding the non-payment of severance packages to hundreds of sugar workers to be called up at the High Court. This situation was deemed unusual as GAWU had filed a number of court actions, none which, it noted, had taken such lengthy periods of time before being called up for hearings, whether at the preliminary stage or for full trials.
“It is not normal for matters to take so long; we don’t know what is the reason. We would all like [the case to be heard] immediately. Workers are being affected and it’s in the interest of all to get it called,” the GAWU General Secretary told this publication last month.
The Wales Estate closure was rationalised by Government as a cost-saving measure due to billions of dollars that was allocated to the declining sugar industry. Since then, the scaling down of other estates across the country has been announced. Many stakeholders had however called for social impact studies to be carried out to assess how communities across the sugar belt would be affected by the closures. Some estimates have pegged a figure of some 10,000 sugar workers being directly affected by estate closures, in addition to their family members and the local economies that depend on the sugar industry.
