Trade unionist NK Gopaul has lamented that while billions of dollars have been injected into GuySuCo, tangible results are yet to be seen and he called for higher wages for workers in the industry.
Gopaul was addressing the 54th Delegates Conference of the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE) on Friday at the Umana Yana. NAACIE is one of the unions in the sugar industry and Gopaul has been associated with it for 52 years.
He pointed out that sister sugar union, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) has issued several statements of concerns over the management style in the industry.
Noting that the Government has just recently appointed a new Board to oversee its operations, Gopaul said that “GAWU must be commended for its vigilant and patriotic stance with regards to decisions made by management that are seen to be inimical to the interest of the industry, the country and its workers. The unions in the industry will have to remain vigilant to ensure that monies pumped into the industry are bringing the desired results which will ultimately see the turnaround of the fortunes of the industry”.
However, Gopaul, a former Minister of Labour, said that when one examines the level of wages currently paid in the industry and the number of years the workers went without any wage increase, one will find that the wages paid cannot attract the turnout required to change the fortunes of the industry around.
Faced with a similar situation of workers’ turnout in 1990, when Booker Tate was invited by the then Government to manage the industry, Gopaul said that their first task was to address wages.
“They implemented a wage policy which saw workers benefitted from the following increases: 50% in 1990; 75% in1991; 22% in 1992. 21% from March 1993. This moved the daily rate from $50in 1990 to $300 in 1993 a 500% increase.
“These increases saw the systematic improvement of labour turnout and improvement in the performance of the industry. The wage increases continued despite the fact that it was expected that there will be a cut in the selling price 1994 for sugar exported on the international market”, Gopaul argued.
He said that he was making that point to draw attention to the fact that the “parsimonious” increases which have been paid out to sugar workers will not give them the incentive to turn out fully and meaningfully to work.
“Higher wages should be seen as the first platform in the turnaround plan. The Government should not be influenced by critics who argued that they are pumping money in a dark hole. Those who are saying so now did not comment when from 1974 when the government confiscated billions of dollars in the form of a sugar levy and wasted it in other sectors in the economy. In fact, from 1990 to 1994 alone the government collected nearly 15 billion dollars in levy. Those were very huge sums of money then”, he said.
He said it should also be highlighted that the industry has been around for nearly 400 years and has given sustenance to the country and its people.
“We should not de-emphasize sugar because of our newly found oil wealth. I ask the question what will the country be engaged in after 40 or 50 years when oil is exhausted?”
Gopaul also slammed the APNU+AFC government for closing sugar estates.
“A lot has been said about the closure of Wales, Enmore, Rose Hall, and Skeldon Estates where thousands of workers lost their jobs. Nearly 400 workers in the NAACIE categories were affected. The decision to put so many workers on the breadline shortly after a Commission of Inquiry completed its study on the industry and submitted a report which highlighted issues to bring the industry to profitability must be seen as an act by the then Board and government aimed at the total shutdown of the industry”, he said.
In his address, Gopaul also called for workers generally to agitate for a living wage and for the country’s growing oil wealth to be shared with the poor and needy.
“The $60,000 national minimum wage and the $75,000 Government minimum wage should be addressed as a matter of urgency with reasonable compensation given to the ordinary workers for their labour. They must be able to go to work feeling a sense of hope that at the end of the month they would be able to comfortably take care of their basic financial needs. If we were to examine the basic needs of a household with all the concessions being granted by Government to alleviate the impact of the cost of living by the payment of financial grants for school children; the because we care school care programme; an additional month’s pay to old age pensioners, benefits to fisher folks and one-off payment to households etc., we will still see a deficit in the pay cheques of the lower paid workers”, he said.
Noting that the PPP/C Government has been addressing infrastructural works all over the country to its credit, he said that the same urgency is not being placed in addressing the plight of the ordinary man.
“I have heard the phrase from workers that `we are a rich country with many poor people around’. There is need for that feeling of hopelessness, poverty and desperation to be erased from the minds of the ordinary man. The trade union movement, therefore, must demand the immediate improvement in the living standards of the ordinary workers”, he said.
