Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) cane planters from the East Demerara Estate (Enmore and La Bonne Intention) have been asked to do harvesting because of the lack of labourers at estates across the country, according to company spokeswoman Audreyanna Thomas.
On Monday, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) said in a statement that the cane planters complained over instructions from the Estate’s Management that they would have had to engage in cane cutting operations with immediate effect.
“The workers’ agitation was heightened vis-a-vis the Collective Labour Agreement (CLA) subsisting between the Union and the Corporation which stipulates their usual tasks,” GAWU said.
The workers, it noted, then advised the Estate Management that since all cane planting tasks were no longer available, they were in fact “redundant” and, therefore, entitled to severance pay.
However, according to Thomas, GuySuCo Senior Communications Officer, the cane planters were offered harvesting jobs since there is a need for more labourers to help with the cutting in the first crop. “East Demerara has a lot of cane left to be harvested and so they need all the hands they could get,” she said, while adding that the company was appalled by the union’s statements even after it constantly claimed that “we are not achieving our targets and we have carryover cane.”
“What is wrong with offering our employees work? Here it is that we are offering work to the cane planters and they went and complained to the union,” Thomas added.
She further explained that labour has been a recurring issue on all of the estates and not just at East Demerara. “We are doing something we consider reasonable and rational where we are offering the cane planters work and that’s the issue and for us it is a non-issue and its more continuous work. If they are not planting then this is an opportunity for them to have continuous work,” Thomas noted, while referencing the company’s difficulties in getting workers to transfer from the now closed Wales Estate to Uitvlugt Estate.
When asked whether the estate would be closing in the future, Thomas related that the decision would lie with the government.
GAWU had said that having learnt that GuySuCo was moving to end cane planting at the East Demerara and Rose Hall Estates, it wrote to the corporation’s Chief Executive Officer on March 15 requesting an urgent meeting to discuss the development. However, up to Monday it said GuySuCo had not yet responded to the union’s request although it was an urgent matter.
However, Thomas said that the company had not received any correspondence from the union until late Monday afternoon. She said that a response would have been issued by Tuesday and the two parties should be meeting sometime soon.
The GAWU statement noted that with the demise of Wales Estate, the closure of two other estates would likely elicit much condemnation in the absence of any credible plan to address the thousands who would be affected. “No study was commissioned and the non-conduct of a socio-economic study would be an everlasting indictment on our decision makers,” it said, before adding that the East Demerara Estate employs no less than 2,200 employees in the field, factory, security administrative and managerial sections.
It noted that the “Wales’ experiences” are still fresh as hundreds have been sent on the “breadline” and into a state of despair. “Hundreds more again on East Demerara Estate seem to be destined also to go this way, and worse too, seemingly at this time, are being denied their severance entitlements,” it concluded.
