Barama Company Limited (BCL) is working to have its plywood factory functioning in a shorter time than the one-year period it said previously and in keeping with the season also gave its former employees a cash taken as a gift of appreciation.
At a simple ceremony held at the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana (CIOG) offices on Woolford Avenue, Thomas Lands, where some 36-plus former employees have been attending Information Technology classes, Deputy General Manager of BCL, Mohindra Chand said the company is working around the clock to have the Land of Canaan, East Bank Demerara facility up and running.
While he did not elaborate, Chand stated that work is being done to ensure the company gets back into production mode of plywood at its Land of Canaan facility.
Some 281 employees of BCL, who were laid off following a boiler incident which led to the closure of the company’s plywood factory in October, have began to receive one of three monthly stipends which the Government of Guyana committed to them when President Bharrat Jagdeo met them last month.
The employees will receive monthly payments of $30,000 over the next three months, which amounts to a total of approximately $8.5 million. The amount is part of a $30.8 million total being expended by the government on the employees, inclusive of IT training. The President had initially pledged $25,000 as the monthly stipend.
Barama has also provided the employees with a cash token of a one-off payout equivalent to two weeks of their last drawn basic salary with the company. This, however, will only be paid to those employees who have signed up for the computer training initiated by the government. The amount, which totals in the vicinity of $8 million, is in addition to the severance package the employees received when the company closed the plywood factory following the boiler explosion.
Barama’s CEO Clement Ooi in a statement said, “In view of the circumstances and with Christmas around the corner, we have decided that the cash token would be a fitting gift of appreciation to our former employees and their families during this time of giving.”
Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir, who was present at the event yesterday, said Barama has extended its levels of generosity by making the extra payment and that the incentive was beyond what was entitled to the employees as discussed in the Collective Labour Agreement.
The employees attending the IT classes are expected to complete the programme within another few weeks and Sheik Moen Hack of the CIOG said that the facilities at the organization were available for any activity which will benefit people.
Gail Ann Torres, one of the former employees, told Stabroek News that the IT classes will be beneficial to her in the long run, as she had always wanted to learn to use the computer. Torres, a mother of four teenage children, said she was grateful to the company for the two-week payment as it will benefit her “in some way” during the holiday period.
Another former employee, Penise Springer, said she was also grateful for the opportunity provided by the authorities for her to learn to use the computer. Springer, who worked with Barama for two years at the plywood factory, stated that the cash incentive will also benefit her during the Christmas season.
President Jagdeo had declared last month that BCL has “another thing coming” if it is the company’s intention not to restart plywood operations here, following the laying off the employees at the Land of Canaan factory.
Jagdeo announced the three-month assistance package for the former employees at the meeting and he stated then that he was not satisfied that the company is doing all it can to get its boilers operational again.
The President stated that he has asked his officials to do an independent investigation since they were unhappy with the timetable for resumption presented by the company.
Barama, in a statement, said the employees were made redundant after the “negligence on the part of trained and experienced personnel led to the boiler system not being fed with the required water supply and resulted in the overheating of the system. This immediately resulted in the entire factory being shutdown.”
It was the first time that workers have actually been laid off en masse. Twice in 2007 workers were threatened with layoffs because of heavy fines from the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC). The GFC had imposed over $96 million in fines on the company, which was accused of underutilizing its concession while tapping logs in other concessions. However, workers were spared after intervention by the Ministry of Agriculture and talks with their union.
