Dear Editor,
The Guyana Sugar Corporation has failed to deliver on its promises. The workers for years have been seeking to obtain a proper NIS Industrial injury benefit-make-up-pay and pension arrangement for all sugar workers.
Sugar workers at the moment receive a pittance of ex-gratia pension on their retirement. To be frank sugar workers like other workers would always need higher rates of pay but they have to recognize that the union got less over the years than previously. There is no doubt that they are not enjoying incentive payment (tax free). From 2011, they were getting smaller increases.
Therefore, their purchasing power has not been improving over the years. The workers were told by the Corporation that the employment cost accounts for a large part of the industry’s revenue. They were asked to understand the situation and act responsibly or else as workers they can contribute to job losses and the downfall of the industry. The big question now is what will all the sugar workers and cane farmers do in Demerara and Berbice if the estates are closed down?
The industry has already come a far way since 1992 under Dr Cheddi Jagan’s administration. There were so many benefits workers were enjoying. They were obtaining benefits which they could not dream of namely improved transportation, qualification day reduced to 75 percent, API and WPI making up about 40-45 tax free days per year. AFC must not give up, it must tell the workers what is going on and expose those who want to betray them by misinforming of their rights and trying to disunite them in their
struggles. Guysuco’s management made colossal blunders when it decided to cut back on payment for cut and load canes per ton.
On the Guysuco agreement a worker who sustains an industrial injury and is incapacitated for a period up to three days shall be granted the minimum day’s pay for each day he is so incapacitated.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan,
former GAWU Field Secretary