Prime Minister Sam Hinds yesterday said that although he understood the plight of the sugarcane harvesters in Guyana, the government could not single them out for tax breaks or other special treatment, adding that there were other people worse off economically.
The Prime Minister was at the time speaking to a delegation of Berbice sugar workers aggrieved at the high cost of living, the Value Added Tax (VAT), and issues related to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS). The meeting was held in the Prime Minister’s Wight’s Lane office yesterday.
However, the Prime Minister said he would take the concerns of the workers to the President and he and government would review the situation in six months if it got worse.
The workers yesterday presented a petition on behalf of their colleagues asking the government to agree to a number of interventions to alleviate their plight.
Last Tuesday, sugar workers at Rose Hall estate downed tools in protest and the strike later spread to Albion and Blairmont. According to Guysuco, the genesis of the strike had to do with workers’ concerns over high rates for electricity, rising food prices, VAT and issues pertaining to the processing of claims and pension by the National Insurance Scheme. Guysuco said none of these issues was of any relevance to the corporation or even industrial in nature.
Requests
Workers said they want the high cost of living to be addressed through food vouchers for sugar workers, a VAT reduction for sugar workers, the NIS process to be streamlined for these workers, Guyana Power and Light (GPL) workers to show respect and the utility to offer them some form of relief. The workers are also requesting that there must be no victimisation after they resume work.
At the meeting with the Prime Minister, the workers were represented by a small delegation headed by Vincent Loncke.
Hinds told the delegation that the government was looking at the rising cost of living but he gave no commitment that the administration would provide food vouchers to the sugar workers. He said the immediate response to the food shortage and the concomitant rise in cost of living was to grow more food and a campaign was in full swing.
“We need to think of the causes of the high cost of living and how it might be relieved… Prime Minister is a man who promoted potatoes, because when Prime Minister was a boy, [we used to boil these],” Hinds said.
On the reduction of the VAT for sugar workers, he said the laws applied to everyone and could not be changed to the benefit of one group of people.
Further, he said that government was not inclined to double the salaries of workers in response to the rising cost of living.
Noting that VAT alone wasn’t responsible for the high prices, the Prime Minister said many vendors had taken advantage of the introduction of the tax to inflict high prices on consumers. He said that the government would continue to monitor whether people had unfairly high mark-ups.
On the issue of NIS, Hinds said the President had expreed his disappointment with the social security agency in terms of its recordkeeping. “Government and the President are very much with you on this matter,” the Prime Minister said.
Hinds told the workers’ representatives that GPL loses a lot of its generation by theft and this has caused some workers of the utility to be suspicious of almost everyone. He said that these GPL workers were subject to the same frustrations as everyone else. But he said that workers of the utility should indeed treat everyone in a respectful manner and be patient in explaining billing situations to consumers.
Hinds explained that government continued to forego the returns on its investment since the electricity company was not making money, contrary to what some of the sugar workers thought.
Hinds assured the sugar workers that they would not be victimised for their strike action when they resumed work.
And he pointed out that with 50 per cent of Guysuco’s earnings going to pay workers, there was need for more mechanisation of the harvesting operations.
Guysuco said the strike had resulted in a total shutdown of the Rose Hall Estate but grinding there was set to restart, since some workers have resumed.
“The strike at Rose Hall has caused approximately 400 punts of canes to be languishing in the fields for the past seven days, which when converted could have yielded almost 215 tonnes of sugar or $140M in revenue.
These canes have deteriorated to such an extent that they would have to be discarded at an additional harvesting expense.
Great costs have been incurred in the nurturing of these canes, only to be discarded as a result of workers who chose to use the strike weapon to voice concerns over matters that have no relevance to the corporation,” Jairam Petam, Human Resources Director at Guysuco said.
Letter to GAWU
Petam in a letter to Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) President Komal Chand said: “Neither your union nor the workers have given any indication to management that they would be proceeding on leave; thus leaving the estate with 400 punts of burnt cane in its hand. The act of proceeding on strike, in this circumstance, could be considered to be mischievous and senseless, aimed at causing great harm to the estate and the Corporation.” Chand could not be contacted for comment yesterday.
In a press release late yesterday afternoon, Guysuco said that its Rose Hall factory is set to start crushing cane following the partial resumption by the cane harvesters represented by GAWU. Last night Guysuco announced that 60 per cent of the workers who have resumed represent three of the five gangs. The remaining two gangs had been awaiting the end of the meeting between the workers and the Prime Minister.
Guysuco said that the corporation may not be able to achieve its target of 108,000 tonnes this crop and may not even achieve 100,000 tonnes because of the bad start to the year weather-wise and industrial action and low attendance. The original target for the crop was 124,000 tonnes but this had been revised owing to the La Nina weather phenomenon experienced at the beginning of the year.
