The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) finds it necessary to bring clarity to several assertions made by Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo in his column titled “Sugar and Politricks” which appeared in the January 14, 2018 Guyana Chronicle. Having read the PM’s column, from all appearances it seems, that the Mr Nagamootoo did not heed our sincere advice to have his columns fact-checked before they are sent to press in order to avoid any embarrassment to him or his office. If it is indeed that his columns are benefitting from such an examination, it seems that the job was not thoroughly done.
Mr Nagamootoo says his Government has nothing to gain from any sugar worker being laid off. But while the PM writes with great concern we see his statements translated into hardly any action. If we go by the situation that is playing out at Wales, for instance, the PM’s words offer little, if any, comfort to the hundreds who have been sent home and facing a miserable and difficulty-filled life. The PM says the government “…is doing all it possibly could to cushion the impact of the crisis…”. But this mere hollow rhetoric is exposed by the January 15, 2018 Stabroek News editorial which said “[f]or two years, the government and GuySuCo issued a series of pledges to the workers of the Wales estate in relation to alternative employment and other options. These have all failed to deliver except for dozens of workers who now have to make an arduous journey to the Uitvlugt estate each day. As had been warned by sceptics, nothing has flowed from the proposed diversification plans. The cultivation of seed paddy at Wales was not a success and the much-hyped aquaculture project has apparently sailed away along with a host of other infeasible plans. It was a return to the sugar diversification plans of the 80s and these plans have predictably met the same ignominious fate and with some of the same advisors on board.” As we reflected on the PM’s statements we recall Proverbs 5, verses 3 and 4 which say “for the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword”.
The PM then goes and attempts to twist the truth regarding GAWU’s Court Action with respect to the Wales workers. Mr Nagamootoo like a hoarse singer, belting out the same tune over and over, seeks ashamedly to find sordid cover for denial of severance pay to the approximately 100 workers of Wales for several months. This now very much overused red-herring has lost its luster and our Union has, on several occasions, corrected the PM’s misguided innuendos. But just to clear the air of misinformation, our Union’s approach to the Courts became necessary after the GuySuCo refused to abide by the Termination of Employment and Severance Pay Act (TESPA) regarding its decision to make workers of Wales redundant. The Court approved our request on May 09, 2017 though the concerned workers severance was due on April 23, 2017. As the dates attest, our Court Action was not in the way of paying the workers their due payments but the PM unashamedly seeks to use it as a mask for the GuySuCo’s, and possibly the Government’s, decision to punish the workers.
Mr Nagamootoo then writes saying that our Union is demanding that the workers be paid their severance payments now. It seems, from our perspective that the PM may need to have his eyes checked, as that has always been our demand. Then the PM says that “[n]either the Termination of Employment and Severance Pay Act (TESPA), nor the collective labour agreement stipulates a date by which such payments ought to be made…”. We wish to point the PM, to Section 21(1) of TESPA. We believe it may be edifying for him.
The PM goes on writing that $500M was budgeted for severance. This is strange, as the PM’s cabinet and AFC colleague, Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder, after our Union publicly disclosed that GuySuCo hadn’t the monies to meet the workers severance payment, is quoted to have said in the December 22, 2017 Stabroek News that the sums for severance pay were available “…from the 2018 budget to the Agriculture Ministry to pay the workers. In addition to the budgetary allocations, he also pointed out that there are funds that will also be available through other avenues that will be used to pay the workers”. Now the PM, seemingly with glee, says only “…an advance on the severance bill” was budgeted. On this score we cannot fail to recall what Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1808 when he said “O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!”
Mr Nagamootoo proudly speaks of the State Paper that was presented in the Parliament in early May, 2017. Certainly, from that time, and even before, the Government was aware of the repercussions of its plans yet inexplicably did not cater for it. Certainly, the Government had a yardstick to work with as the PM wrote that at Wales “…just under 100 workers received an estimated $80 million”. Further to that, GuySuCo, during an engagement with our Union on December 20, 2017, told us that it had supplied a preliminary figure to the Administration weeks before the Budget was presented. Is it that the GuySuCo numbers were ignored?
The PM also says some 500 workers were engaged in certain re-training. But just mere days prior to Mr Nagamootoo’s column, he read a message in the National Assembly from President David Granger which said in reference to re-training that “…over 100 of them [workers]signaling their willingness to be retrained”. Tisk tisk Mr Nagamootoo, do you see how important fact checking is. These foot-in-the-mouth episodes could be avoided.
Mr Nagamootoo then serenades us about recent training done by the Business Ministry or small business loans. If the PM’s figures are correct, given the obvious inaccuracies contained in his column, we must ask:- how many sugar workers benefitted? The PM also touts investments that his Government supposedly garnered, we ask again:- how many sugar workers were employed as we see the cement factory along the Berbice River which Vice President, Khemraj Ramjattan said would have been a major employer of displaced sugar workers closed and some 100 employees sent into the unemployed world.
We recognize the PM is trying tirelessly to free himself and Government from the sad situation that grips thousands in the sugar belt. While the PM speaks about Politricks, it is the Administration of which he is a top member that is engaged in trickery, deception and duplicity. How else can Mr Nagamootoo move from saying to GINA on November 28, 2015 that “There should be no discussion or debate regarding the importance of the sugar industry to Guyana’s economy… in fact we have said this on a number of occasions, that this Government sees sugar as too big to fail” to now supporting openly and blaringly decisions to close down estates and put people out of work and into a life of impoverishment.
