More than a year after it announced the end of sugar at Wales, the government yesterday sent its first high-level team to the West Bank Demerara community and heard demands for severance pay from former estate workers at a stormy meeting.
Minister of Public Secu-rity Khemraj Ramjattan said that while the government has already paid some $339M in severance to some Wales workers, it would take an additional $375M to pay the remainder who have been protesting.
Minister of Agriculture, Noel Holder led the team of Cabinet Ministers, which also included Minis-ter of Public Telecommuni-cations Cathy Hughes and Minister of State Joseph Harmon, to the Wales Community Centre, where they engaged dozens of sugar workers.
For more than a year now, the workers had been calling for President David Granger and his ministers to visit the community and explain the reasons behind the end of sugar at Wales. After Holder made a short presentation on the current state of GuySuCo, which he said was on life support, and its future, the floor was opened to the workers.