In a statement, GAWU said the situation confirmed “the union’s longstanding positions and exhortations that the corporation’s practices were responsible for too many millions in losses annually.” According to GAWU, this comes “against the background of dubious management decisions such as outsourcing of certain services to certain contractors; reports of visible, blatant idling of vital GuySuCo-owned machines; financial billion-dollar losses and fiascoes of Booker-Tate contractors and the Skeldon bungling; not to mention the astonishingly low three percent across-the-board wage increase by an Arbitration Tribunal towards the end of 2009.”
GAWU said that while this is no time for blowing its own trumpet, it had argued before the arbitration tribunal against GuySuCo’s mismanagement, quoting from two independent reports by an Uitvlugt Review Committee and a Commis-sion of Enquiry at the East Demerara Estates.
“The malpractices discovered and revealed at these two locations provided insights of disturbing managerial shortcomings across the industry,” GAWU stated. In that light, the union concluded that the latest Procurement/Materials Management charges “are merely indicative of a wider GUYSUCO managerial malaise.” GAWU reiterated that GuySuCo, which is so pivotal to the country’s economy, has been guilty “of too many areas of consistent mismanagement and needless extravagance, now seemingly the product of corrupt managerial practices and procedures.”
GAWU, however, said that it welcomed GuySuCo Chairman Dr Nanda Gopaul’s assurances of audits on the corporation’s procurement and accounting system and an examination of whether there has been neglect on the part of senior management. More-over, GAWU called on GuySuCo to listen and pay heed “to the union’s industrial intelligence and others much more often if this vital sector is to become sustainable once again.”
Shaw said he was fired by the company last week Monday because he had been victimised after he had produced a damning report that exposed weaknesses that were costing the corporation millions of dollars. But according to the corporation, he was fired for allegedly breaching the corporation’s procurement and procedural policy in the purchasing of electrodes, failing to procure electrodes on time, which resulted in a halt in the operations of a section of the estate.
