THIS year marks 100 years of bauxite mining in Guyana, which commenced in the upper reaches of the Demerara River. The bauxite industry emerged as one of the nation’s most profitable industries and attracted skills primarily from the coastland. While in its early and prime days there were disparities in communal activities and living conditions, the industry attracted proficient artisans and paid comparatively attractive wages.Over the years, bauxite has made significant and meaningful contributions to development, personal and national. As the nation marks its Golden Jubilee and looks back with pride as it is reminded that the Independence Arch situated on Brickdam was built by bauxite workers and donated by the bauxite company to the people of Guyana.
Where commemoration usually sets out to review the struggles, successes, achievements, challenges and engages in evaluation of a people’s right to self-determination in continuing to chart a course and mould their destiny, the contributions of bauxite and its workers cannot be ignored or placed on the sidelines.
With nationalisation in 1971, which marked a major achievement for Guyanese, given that the Government of Guyana took command of the industry with the aim of having the society benefit economically from the profit of this natural resource. Prior to nationalization, the determination of profit was set by foreign owners who kept their money abroad and denied the nation its benefit.
Local ownership presented Guyanese the opportunity to be involved in management at the highest level and greater attention was paid by the bauxite companies to the communities. This refashioning of focus resulted in areas such as housing developments, excess production of electricity distributed to communities who under foreign ownership were denied, scholarship granted to workers and their children, and technical education once confined to employees’ children was opened to the communities.
It has been said that bauxite workers were the nation’s most skilled artisans. This attribution is due in large part to the fact that the industry was technologically driven, had sophisticated mining equipment, and large processing plants that produced calcined bauxite and alumina, and even alum for the local water treatment plants.
To produce the human resources needed for this complex industry to function and serve the communities, there were managerial and leadership training at three levels (non-management, middle management and senior management). Such skill acquisition benefited not only the industry, but state entities across the country who sent their personnel to participate in the programmes.
Bauxite contributed significantly to the nation’s foreign exchange. During its prime, the proceeds were at times used to pay the salaries of public service employees. The industry was basically self-sustaining and where excess electricity was produced by its plants in Berbice and Demerara, such was transmitted to the state electricity company, then the Guyana Electricity Corporation (GEC). In fact, a special transmission line was put in place connecting Linden to the Garden of Eden power plant, East Bank Demerara.
Bauxite as a product had its glory days. Its problems began when the industry had difficulty in producing the product to satisfy market demands. This was due primarily for the need for deeper excavating of overburden (going deeper into the earth) to extract the product type on demand in the marketplace. Deeper excavation increases production cost, and this was at a time when the global oil price had skyrocketed, which meant reductions in profit margins for every product produced. Ultimately, production levels diminished, which consequently led to loss of strategic markets. Bauxite never had a marketing problem; it was always a production problem.
Post-nationalisation has seen tremendous investment into the workers and their communities. Hopes and aspirations were high and workers demanded that they be treated based on the nation’s policy of ‘each according to his own’ and deserving of a fair share of the nation’s patrimony. The historical militancy of mine workers from the inception of bauxite resulted in clashes between workers and management, and among workers, management and government, and foreign owners/management.
The Structural Adjustment Programme instituted by the Desmond Hoyte administration resulted in systems being put in place for the divestment of state entities such as bauxite and sugar. The PPP administrations moved to realise divestment in bauxite. The tactic used to make bauxite lucrative to foreign investment was built on low wages/salary, poor working conditions, transgressing of workers’ rights and violating of laws. This practice remains in effect today.
As Guyana marks 100 years of bauxite mining and 50 years of independence, bauxite is being mined and workers employed in an environment with markedly similar or worse characteristics of the pre-independence and pre-nationalisation eras.