Tensions were rising in the community of Wales, West Bank Demerara yesterday as information about the sugar estate there being closed at the end of this year began to circulate.
When Stabroek News visited the area yesterday afternoon, many of the workers said they would be “badly affected” because the estate was their “backbone”, noting that the entire West Bank depends on the estate for survival.
They were worried that they would be out of a job and were contemplating their next move.
The Ministry of Agriculture issued a press release yesterday, confirming that the estate would be closed.
Distress
It was not just the workers who were in distress, but the businesspeople as well as the housewives.
According to a woman, Fidell Toney, 69, who sells plantain chips and other snacks, “When I hear the estate gon close down, I say is better I dead…”
She lamented, “If the people don’t earn where they would get money to support me?” This was also the concern of residents who operate big businesses, with some calling for the estate to be “privatized.”
A shop owner said that at the moment she was “not doing any kind of business so I don’t know what would happen when the estate close.”
She was also distressed that her son who has been working at the estate for two years would be out of a job too, saying “it would be hard, hard… If the estate close down, everything would shut down and I would have to close my lil business tuh.”
She said she has to find food and money to send her children to school. She is also aware that people have up to 10 children to school in different areas and they would find it very difficult.
Another housewife whose husband is employed at the estate, said when they heard about the closure, they kept praying and hoping that it was not going to happen. Her husband has not decided yet what he would do to maintain the family.
One man who started working there almost six years ago as a “cane-planter” said he heard rumours that the estate would be closed and is hoping he would find another job soon because life would be “rough.”
Abdool Rahaman, 45, a worker in the mechanic shop for 29 years told this newspaper that he is not too worried as yet but would have to “try and look for another job.”
A cane-harvester for the past 37 years said the closure would not affect him because is close to retirement. He was concerned about the “young ones,” saying that he also has two sons working at the estate.
Reports are that some of the workers would be given jobs at the Uitvlugt estate. However, they lamented: “If the estate wants to take you 10 miles away to work and you refuse, then it is a binding law with GuySuCo and government to pay the workers severance benefits.”
They noted that the private farmers supply 60% of the cane to GuySuCo because of management’s negligence in preparing and maintaining the estate’s land for more production.
GAWU
In a flyer that was being circulated by the Guyana Agricultural & General Workers’ Union (GAWU) yesterday, it was stated that such a rash decision would result in over 300 factory workers being jobless.
It said too that it is likely that over 1200 field jobs would be lost because it would prove to be uneconomical and irrational to transport cane from Wales to Uitvlugt.
The flyer also charged: “Ruination would face scores of cane farmers who would suffer major financial losses in income, machinery and crop investments.”
Calling on workers to oppose the returning of the estate to private-ownership, a slogan on the flyer said: “Raise your voices: No to closure! No to privatization!”
