The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU) believes that sugar workers nationwide, who it claims were all unfairly punished by the previous administration, are deserving of government’s recently announced financial support programme.
In a release yesterday, GAWU applauded the announcement by Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo that some seven thousand sugar workers who were made jobless following the closure of the Wales Estate in 2016 and Enmore, Rose Hall and Skeldon Estates in 2017 will be the beneficiaries of a grant of $250,000 each. Such assistance, the union stated, is a welcome salve to the hardships faced by retrenched sugar workers as it “seeks to correct the injustice and indignation the workers and their families confronted following the callous minimization of the sugar industry.”
The union stressed that the estate closures, as pointed out in an International Labour Organization (ILO) study, caused sugar workers much “hardship and despair” and reiterated that the decision to shutter estates had no sincere economic or social rationale. As far as GAWU is concerned, it was an “undisguised attempt to punish sugar workers and the sugar industry.”
It was also argued that even those who were retained were “punished severely by the former Administration” and that the decline in the standard-of-living that sugar workers faced at the hands of the Coalition government “is now documented history”. The release highlighted successive years of no pay increase, and the arbitrary withdrawal of benefits as part of the policies that hurt sugar workers.
“We believe they too are equally as deserving, and we urge the Government to consider extending its support to all sugar workers. We believe it will help to alleviate the many burdens the workers had to contend with during the term of the Coalition in office.”
GAWU also took note of the Vice President’s plans for the shuttered estates and said it would seek to engage the Government “on its thoughts to develop a better understanding and be able to advise workers who would seek guidance,” the release added.
