Source: Guyana Chronicle
Tax-free overtime restored for bauxite workers
December 3, 2015. By Ariana Gordon.
BAUXITE workers will once again benefit from tax-free overtime as they did in 1988, Minister of State Joseph Harmon announced at his post-Cabinet press briefing at the Ministry of the Presidency yesterday.
Harmon explained that the “reinstatement of the tax-free overtime benefits to bauxite workers” is aimed at correcting what government believes was “a punitive exercise” for not supporting the former People’s Progressive Party (PPP) administration. “In 1988, bauxite workers were granted tax-free concession on overtime work. These concessions were enjoyed by workers until 2007 when they were arbitrarily taken away by the previous administration,” he told reporters. The move by the PPP administration, he said, “adversely affected the earnings of bauxite workers” from Linden and Kwakwani.