General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) has criticized what he says was the recent focus by Natural Resources & Environment Minister Raphael Trotman on production figures in the bauxite industry without “mentioning a word about working conditions and the industrial relations problems” in the industry.
Lewis told Stabroek Business in a telephone interview on Monday, “It is all well and good for the minister to tell us how much bauxite was produced by the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BGCI) over a period. When he does so, however, without breathing a word of official concern about the way in which the workers who produce the bauxite are treated it raises the question as to where the government’s priorities lie. Personally, I think it’s scandalous.”
The mid-year figure for bauxite production announced by Trotman recently is 762,000 tonnes of which the majority Rusal-owned BCGI produced 73 per cent. But Lewis said that apart from the fact that overall bauxite continues to perform poorly, the BCGI production figure meant little “if … the bauxite is going to be produced on the backs of workers who are being mistreated and who are being denied the right to union representation.”
A week ago Lewis, who is also General Secretary of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU), launched a withering attack of BCGI, claiming that the company was ‘out of control” and asserting that the prevailing posture of the government suggested that it was “either unable or unwilling” to curb the excesses of BCGI.
Lewis said he thought it was significant that Trotman had announced that government “will be putting together a team to review the industry in total and report to government.” The veteran trade unionist said he thought it was “particularly significant that Trotman had specifically said that this was not an investigation, but just a review. Are we to assume that the minister was seeking to assure BCGI and specifically, the Russians, that the Government of Guyana is not about to launch an investigation into its industrial relations and safety and health practices when such an investigation is sorely needed? Frankly, I believe that except Minister Trotman or some other suitable government official provides us with an explanation we really have no option but to assume that the government is not particularly mindful of the atrocities that continue to be carried out by BCGI. After all of the talk in opposition the government has to put its money where its mouth was as far as putting brake on BGCI is concerned. It is high time that government takes a stand on BCGI and its Russian management.”
And according to Lewis it was “shameful” that “our country and our bauxite industry has to be faced with the scourge of a foreign company breaking our laws and brutalizing our workers 100 years after mining commenced in the sector here. What is worse is that all this is happening in the face of no official effort to take charge of the situation and put an end to the “anti-labour, anti-worker practices in the bauxite industry,” he added.
