Workers from the Blairmont Sugar Estate yesterday downed tools protesting a one-week delay in their “holiday with pay (HWP)” allowances and later in the day an agreement was reached that the workers would receive their money on May 17.
Workers are expected to resume duty from today. There was no word yesterday from GuySuCo on this protest.
On the picket line, workers told Stabroek News that they had decided to take action after learning that GuySuCo did not have money to pay the workers.
The picketing exercise started on Monday morning in front of the Blairmont estate but the turnout was poor owing to heavy rainfall.
Field secretary for the Guyana Agricultural & General Workers Union (GAWU), Hardial Ramdihal told this newspaper yesterday that the workers were out to “express their dissatisfaction about the HWP which is an entitlement for a long, long time but GuySuCo is reluctant to pay.”
He said GuySuCo was saying that they didn’t have the money and that as soon as they accumulate some money they would pay. “We don’t know when they would accumulate the money. The workers normally budget based on the HWP…”
Ramdihal said too that “it is not the workers’ fault that GuySuCo is going down. Management should be serious in what they are doing,” contending that the “fertilizing rate” has been reduced by half, resulting in lower production.
Several workers, some carrying tools and lunch bags started assembling at the entrance of the Bath cultivation plot from around 5:30 am.
Meanwhile, bearing placards and chanting, “No money, no work” and “no money, no school,” they then made their way in front of the PPP’s Freedom House at Bath, West Coast Berbice around 7 am where they continued to “fight fuh we rights.”
A worker, Bishnauth Persaud said he has been “working in the industry since 1969 and never came across this – workers never had to wait so long for their back pay. It was due since Friday gone.”
According to him, “I want to suggest that the big ones in GuySuCo should wait for their pay and the poor ones at the bottom get something.”
A representative from GAWU, Mahendra Persaud made it clear that the protest was “not a political move. We are just out here asking GuySuCo to give us what we deserve.”
He called on the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy to “intervene so we can get our pay, like the government does in the other sector.”
“I have bills to pay and two children to send to high school and it is very hard,” another worker, Sewchan Mohan lamented.
He displayed a placard that read: “GAWU, we have bills to pay, pay our HWP now.” Like the other workers, he was also distressed that the workload was getting heavier but the wages were not increasing.
“GuySuCo mark ‘four-day weeding’ on the board and although we do the work for four days we would only get two days’ pay,” the workers pointed out.
Speaking on the drop in production, Ramdihal said, “GuySuCo only made around 48,000 tonnes for the first crop which is very bad. For the other crops they used to make anything like 80 to 90,000 tonnes. That is telling you that GuySuCo is in deep financial crisis.”
According to him, GuySuCo is also reluctant to do “flood-fallow where we bring all the nutrients of the soil up as well as supplementary fertilizing, from six to seven months before reaping and normal … practice in mechanical tillage.”
He said the union was there “to stand and support the workers in their call for the HWP.” He said too that a two-month retroactive for the job evaluation is still outstanding.
