Sugar workers must remember when Jagdeo & Ramotar tried to kill their Union GAWU...Who was there to defend them.

Light a candle for Guyana sugar workers –

Moses Nagamootoo lives

The workers deserve 50% increases just like the ministers. 

The cane workers have a right to strike and the PPP will encourage them to do so, for political brownie points.  

Jus like Rohee de goat leading the sheep.

BUT, who might lose more in the long run, if the industry shuts down, 10,000 sugar workers or the government ?   Win or lose, government ministers and workers will still receive their pay cheque and have a job. Does the PPP have any brains ? 

If the sugar industry is shut down, Jagdeo and the PPP should fund the cane workers re-training programs at UG, for office jobs at Freedom House.

What will Komal Chand and GAWU do, when unemployed sugar workers not paying union dues ?

Maybe fish fa Gilbakka.  

Sorry Gil. 

No need to be sorry, my yarrow-catching friend. We're both fishing in the same muddy water that is this GNI pond.

Only last night, Suki tell me..... sorry, lemme rephrase ..... only last night, I said I was betting anyone that GAWU would contradict or ignore the OPM statement and call some strikes before the current crop ends. Me nah seh nutting wrang deh, banna. GAWU meeting today and the agenda is: To strike or not to strike?

Yuh see, budday, without the strike weapon GAWU is nothing. And for decades the PPP and GAWU have schooled sugar workers to use that weapon first and then talk after. In other words, strike to force talks. And I am saying bluntly here that GuySuCo and the government are foolishly ignoring that reality.

Also, we're seeing in practice the lashback that Cabinet salary increases was bound to cause. How can the government tell sugar workers there is no increase for them in 2015 when it awarded itself and its public servants increases in 2015? If APNU+AFC had set the example by waiting until next year for pay raise, it would have been in a strong moral position to persuade sugar workers to accept its reasoning.

It's the strongest tool an organize union has, STRIKE. Presently the government is not giving an inch. Rice and sugar are the two major industries that brings in foreign currency to the country and the country needs them to succeed.GAWU was used by all political parties when in opposition to destabilize the ruling government, so this is nothing new,but why, so now because GAWU is know to represent mainly Indians.

The sugar industry is in trouble. It is irresponsible for GAWU to order a strike at this time for Recognition of all Sugar workers under GAWU's banner.

It is also more irresponsible for the PM to threaten the sugar workers that the end result of their strike will be the ultimate shut down and closer of the Sugar Industry.

Hold on until the government starts collecting royalty from ExxonMobil. GAWU will have to think twice before every strike.

Suh to earn $US Guyana pumps money in Guysuco.

Stop dreaming. We know that the Government will never get a penny.

Should the Govt throw money after the bankrupted Guysucko?

Wha stupidness you deh pun this marning  eh rama.

Don't be harsh with Rama. He is one of my respectable friends here.

Rama is an aright banna i cool with him.

So your government is waiting for oil revenue for exploration started under the PPP watch? You guys are shameless as now you take credit for initiatives that the PPP started. Look how now you hold on to the Marriott and the Providence stadium. Under the PPP they were both described as white elephants.   There is no economic plan by this bunch of incompetent lot now in office. They are making it up as they go along. 

Uncle Rama is lamenting that rum price might jump up. He is an avid supporter of the sugar industry, you know.

When the Private sector cannot create job, then it's the government responsibility to save jobs. In Guyana sugar has been around as long as prostitution ,it is now broken but can be fixed. If you shut-down sugar, think of the thousands unemployed, unhappy Guyanese. Then the Crime rate will sky rocketed , suicide up and then total collapse in the economy. How long can you blame the PPP, six months, one year or forever???

kp.. the govt have a ten year plan let see how that will roll out.

Name me a promising industry in Guyana at this moment. Oil royalty is a decade away, by then there will be a change in Government.Governments are there ,not to create, but to save jobs, bail outs, restructure, diversify and to further invest.

It's GAWU, the PPP union that wants to close down the industry by calling a strike. Was it not the PPP who trained them how to set cats on fire and loose them in cane fields to spread fire?

Stricture the Government, smarter the population, the people want action, YESTERDAY.

Guysuco should look in to modern methods of cane planting

and harvesting.

Did PNC strike before they took 50% RAISE, No ,they just put their hands in the Cookie Jar and take as much as they want. Imagine ,in a failing economy, they are taking 50%, what will happen in a robust economy????500%%%.STRIKE is a legal tool for all unions, that's nothing new when PNC use that tool.Most of you GNI's pretend to know SUGAR, I know sugar ,I worked in Sugar, sugar worker are hard workers, unlike government employees, all lazy bastards, I know too, I worked there!!!

The PNC didn't take a 50% raise. The salaries earned by the new administration is up to 50% higher compared to the previous administration. The PNC was not in government so they could not have received a raise.

Ow bhaiya kp i had a four year stint in the sugar industry

starting from the manure gang moving up to separate the

juice from the soil,quit at age 22 after GAWU union guys

backed away from a position offered to me.I was educated

don't want to be a teacher  or work for govt,i like to be my

own boss enjoying it on to today.

If a strike is called, it won't last long. Xmas is just around the corner. Burning the crop can backfire and have a negative economic impact on the workers and the economy.

This is something I don't understand about Guyana. They sell their raw products to be processed overseas, where Guyanese jobs are lost.  

There is a sugar process plant at Enmore, how effective is it ?

Bigger yet, they allow the Chinese to harvest the forest and send it overseas  for processing, when processing plants in Guyana could create hundreds of jobs.

Decades ago, BC lumber  was returning to BC from Japan, as processed wood. We bought shelves of BC wood, made in Japan.

Now most processing is done in BC, where it creates jobs.

Don't the Chinese company  have a responsibility to build a processing plant in Guyana, that was an agreement years ago, why give them another two years to do so ?

In two years they can ship billions in hard wood overseas.       

Politicians are less expensive to acquire and maintain than processing plants.

Tola you seem to be an intelligent person unlike the bajan singing jerk. The issue is that Guyana does not currently have the capability to produce raw sugar competitively with the rest of the world where modern techniques and equipment and economies of scale enable other sugar producing nations to produce the product at a much lower cost. Adding value to the product via packaging and so forth to compensate for inefficient production will not be the solution. You are merely kicking the can down the road. 

The people of Guyana should make this government unmanageable just as they did to the PPP during the two riots. Let the sugar workers strike nationwide, and the rice farmers should ceased growing another crop of rice. Show this incompetent government who got more balls.

SHUT IT DOWN!!!  SLAVERY WAS ABOLISHED!!!!!!!!!   LET US START RAISE FUNDS TO FEED THE SUGAR WORKERS AND THEIR FAMILIES FOR 100 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would also urged Indians to stop growing baigan and show the Afros who get more seed than baigan.  

That's easy for you to say since you don't live in Guyana.

Matters not where I live. I was NOT living in Guyana when the PNC/AFC was burning down the frigging country to make the government unmanageable. I guess you live in Guyana.

Basant Bhai, teck it easy. Pressure does meck pipe burst.  

BG_S, there is nothing new under the sun. When the PPP won the 1992 election President Jagan continued implementing the main features of Desmond Hoyte's Economic Recovery Programme [ERP].

For most of his political life, Cheddi Jagan advocated "nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy." He supported Burnham's nationalization of bauxite and sugar companies and banks and even called on Burnham to nationalize the foreign insurance companies too. When Dr Jagan got into government, however, he retained the Privatization Unit which Hoyte had formed to sell off state corporations and agencies.

When the PPP was in the opposition, Dr Jagan used to condemn the PNC regime for accepting "IMF diktat." However, after 1992 the PPP government itself accepted IMF terms.

The PPP regime also retained the Social Impact Amelioration Programme [SIMAP] which Hoyte had set up and which was funded from the sales of wheat flour that the US was giving Guyana free under its PL480 Program.

The PPP government got the most royalty from Omai Gold Mines which started operating under an agreement with Hoyte and Greenidge.

Both Presidents Cheddi and Janet Jagan governments collected their portions of dividends from GT&T which Hoyte had sold to foreigners while keeping 20% shareholding.

I can give more examples showing how President Jagan's government carried on and benefited from Hoyte's PNC regime's policies. No one said Jagan and the PPP were shameless. Politics is politics. It is unrealistic to expect the APNU+AFC government to start from scratch with its own policies and programmes, to reinvent the wheel. Present governments build on the foundations of past governments. So it goes.

These people work for Guysuco, which doesn't even have money to meet existing payroll.

Yes the workers might get their pay increase.  FEWER of them that is as Guysuco cuts workers to ensure that they can support their payroll costs.

These are NOT the worst paid people in Guyana, and GAWU rantings about the incomes shows that they make DOUBLE what civil servants make.

Understand this. Exxon isn't mining for a thing until prices increase, so we have no idea when these royalties will flow in.  With gold in decline govt revenues will also drop, as will their ability to continue to bail out Guysuco.

The PPP set the precedent by selling Guymine, when they claimed that their losses were unsustainable. If GAWU doesn't see a similar fate for Guysuco, let them continue to burden the taxpayers of Guyana.

And yet you demand that they became even more uncompetitive by increasing wages, when GAWU will also continue to resist the use of labor saving technologies.