Guyanese workers are treated like second-class citizens – APNU/AFC leading culprit

By: Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

Make no mistake, APNU/AFC is leading from the front as working people are today being treated as second-class citizens in Guyana. Now everybody understands why APNU/AFC, from the get-go, eliminated the Ministry of Labour.

Paying wages and salaries late, even when it is a rare thing, is an unacceptable practice. But late payments of wages and salaries in Guyana has become a weapon to attack workers, restricting their fundamental rights. Every day now in Guyana, we see egregious examples of workers’ rights being trampled on, with the Government being the lead-culprit. There is a nasty reason why APNU/AFC, from the get-go, decided to eliminate a Ministry of Labour and, instead, replace it with merely a department in the Ministry of Social Protection.

The assignment of Keith Scott in 2015 to oversee the department with the title of Minister in the Ministry of Social Protection was another signal at the time that APNU/AFC was on a path to make Guyana’s working people second-class citizens.

This week, there was confirmation that workers at GWI have been subjected to late payments of salaries for some time now. When the PPP parliamentarian, Bishop Juan Edghill, took GWI to the task, GWI’s CEO, rather than explaining what was happening with workers at GWI, chose to attack Edghill.

But it was quite noticeable that Dr Van West Charles did not and could not deny the charges the workers at GWI have been subjected to late payments of their salaries and benefits continuously for some time now. The number of workers at GWI increased by more than 100% and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

The wage bill has increased by a mighty 500%, but the GWI workers, themselves, have seen only stingy increases. Why then, this hefty increase in the wage bill, from $4M to $20M per month, at GWI, if workers are only getting stingy increases and then not getting their wages and salaries on time?

Late payment of wages and benefits has become a bad habit in the sugar industry with GuySuCo making it the norm. Even pensioners in the sugar industry are today suffering from late payments. Just last week, workers at Uitvlugt, Albion and Blairmont were told not to show up for their wages on the regular payday. In fact, many of these workers have not been paid more than two weeks later.

That these workers have had to work without a wage increase for five years now and that these workers often show up and there is no work because the incompetent management caused factory downtime, all, contribute to the overall degrading of sugar workers.

The news that sugar production has plummeted in the second crop, which is about to end in a few weeks because factory downtime has reached almost 700 hours for the crop, while shocking, is not surprising. The truth is that APNU/AFC is creating the milieu for other rounds of down-sizing.

At the moment, this shameless Government has plans to only retain Albion as a sugar estate. The others are on the chopping block. More sugar workers will join their 7000 comrades as the unemployed in Guyana.

In the meanwhile, many workers who were fired are yet to receive their severance payments, some years after the fact. Just this week, the Chief Justice ordered GuySuCo and the Government, for the second time, to pay the workers their severance with 4% interest.

This scourge of late payment of salaries has become a frequent occurrence in the traditional public service. This year, there have been several instances in which public servants have been paid late. The excuses are as egregious as the late payment themselves, with the Ministry of Finance pointing fingers at the various ministries, while the ministries themselves have pointed fingers at the Ministry of Finance.

The Ministry of Finance accuses the ministries of submitting improper documentation or late documentation. But these ministries have been doing such paperwork for decades, why is it they suddenly do not have the ability or the competence to submit payroll documents on time and in the proper manner? While APNU/AFC plays games with workers’ wages and salaries, the victims are always the workers and their children.

The lead role in treating workers as second-class citizens is the APNU/AFC-led Government. The Government has shamelessly abrogated its responsibility to protect and promote workers interest. Not shockingly, the private sector is following the ugly example. When Troy and RUSAL just arbitrarily send home workers and deny them wage increases, they got their spunk from the Government itself.

When EXXON has the temerity to pay Guyanese workers only a fraction of what they pay workers from Trinidad and from other countries at the EXXON operations in Guyana, they take their spunk from our own Government.

Just last week, workers at GRA complained that while top-level management gave themselves huge pay increases, the majority of struggling workers were given a pittance as salary increases. The Government did just that in 2015 when they gave themselves 100% increase. Working people have become second-class citizens in our country. It is a disgrace.