The Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. (GuySuCo) yesterday commenced a Community Outreach programme for residents in ‘sugar dependent’ areas at the Wales Community Centre but agitated workers were not convinced that they should travel to the Uitvlugt estate and pressed for their severance pay.
The former manager of the Wales estate, Dave Kumar told the workers that the estate was not closed but was diversified. When one of the workers tried to interrupt him, he blurted out that if he couldn’t listen, it’s either he leaves or the worker leaves. This caused a commotion when almost all of the workers got up and walked out. It was only after some pleading that most of them returned and the meeting continued. At this point, the manager of the Uitvlugt estate, Yudhisthira Mana addressed the workers and showed them power point photos of the work done on the Uitvlugt Estate Improvement Programme.
They listened attentively at first but eventually got agitated when he encouraged them to join the team to make the programme a success. They also asked what benefits they would have to encourage them to go Uitvlugt and were dissatisfied that the officials from GuySuCo could not provide them with any.
GuySuCo says that the objectives of this outreach to the various communities include: Create a greater awareness on the need for employees to turn out to ensure that the canes are harvested within the crop; mobilize the residents around Estates to encourage employees to improve attendance; mobilize community leaders and other stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, government, private and civil society sectors around the importance of improving attendance on all Estates.
The next outreach is planned for the Uitvlugt Community Centre on 5 July, 2017 at 4:00 pm.
