Dear Editor,
The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), through its Assistant General Secretary, Aslim Singh, took part in a two-day meeting of Latin American and Caribbean trade unions affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). The meeting was held on October 02 and 03, 2019 and took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It brought together some fifty trade unionists from Argentina, Guyana, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, among other countries in the region. Also attending the meeting was WFTU General Secretary, George Mavrikos who is based at the body’s headquarters in Athens, Greece.
GAWU, in its address to the meeting, used the opportunity to bring attention to the heavy burdens the workers and their families must now fetch in Guyana. Our Union pointed out that, in recent times, the workers and their families have been confronted by heavy increases in the cost-of-living occasioned by the imposition of new taxes, hiking of existing taxes and the withdrawal of subsidies to workers and pensioners. Apart from that the Union’s Assistant General Secretary told the meeting that our country’s democratic culture and rule of law are being undermined following the failure of the Government to abide by the consequences of a successful No Confidence motion in the National Assembly. The Union pointed out that the democratic and other forces in our country were now engaged in a new struggle to restore Constitutional rule through free and fair elections and roll back the hardships imposed on the working-class.
Yours faithfully,
Seepaul Narine
General Secretary
GAWU