Like dem don't care 'bout de working class? I talking bout the real working class not the paid PPP propagandists.

GuySuCo refuses to pay sugar workers

-    “Some fraud going on in the Union,” an upset worker claimed

Thousands of field and factory workers who are members of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) are becoming agitated upon hearing that the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) will not pay them their holiday-with-pay (HWP) on Friday.

Workers, however, claimed that the only reason they will not be paid is because there is “some fraudulent activity” going on within the company.
GuySuCo informed the Union by letter last Friday that they are not in a position to make payments to the workers.

The letter stated “As you are aware by practice, qualified workers are usually awarded Holiday With Pay no more than two weeks after the closure of a crop. Toward that end, those estates which ceased grinding during week-ending May 11, 2012 should be effecting payment of the award on week ending 25th May, 2012.

Unfortunately due to our unfavourable cash flow situation, we are not in a situation to make that payment.”

Kaieteur News understands that the core reason for the Corporation’s consistent depleted financial state relates to its failure to attain, even close, its production targets. At the end of last week, Guysuco produced only 70,027 tonnes of sugar out of its target of 101,813 tonnes.

It was reported that even if the weather had been favourable, the estates that ended their crop simply did not have the quantity of canes to assist meaningfully in realizing the crop’s target.

A source advised that if the seven grinding estates had been facilitated by good weather to harvest their entire crop no more than 84,000 tonnes of sugar would have been obtained.

Some Wales sugar estate workers who have been working with the corporation for years said “every time they gotta pay we it’s the same problem. I have been working at this estate for years and the best time was with the Former President, Dr. Cheddi Jagan  now is the opposite,” a sugar worker, Burtum Cummings stressed.

Cummings, who is the father of three, said, “We paying the union but they nah do anything for us. If we work one day they taking out union due and then they are not doing anything for us.”

Another worker, Malcom Hercules, who is the father of eleven, said, “I work when GAWU was fighting for recognition on the estate, that time we had implementation from one -15 percent but when GAWU take over from MPCA and everything done, they just throw everything in the garbage bin.”

Kaieteur News understands that the workers are frustrated that they have to strike every time they have money to collect. They are also angry at the fact that their Union, GAWU, is not fighting for them but instead, taking their money and doing “nothing.”