“We will suffer” – Enmore workers
Closure of sugar estates
By Shemuel Fanfair
Sugar workers attached to the soon-to-be-closed Enmore Estate have registered their distress for the financial challenges that they stand to face in the coming months.
On Tuesday, Guyana Times met with a group of community members at a small market at Enterprise, East Coast Demerara (ECD), who highlighted their worry over the entity’s closure. In fact, a few sellers in the area noted that community members have already begun to reduce their spending, which is having early far-reaching effects to them. This scenario mirrors that of Wales, West Bank
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Demerara last year when residents there had also reduced their purchasing of goods upon the announcement that the Wales Sugar Estate would shut down.
Speaking with this publication, Rampersaud Prashad, the Estate’s Field Secretary, noted that he built his home from his earnings as a cane cutter. He has worked with the Estate for 33 years.
“Everybody was sad, hearing about closure; everybody depend on sugar, from Ogle to Cane Grove. We have 2300 persons working at East Demerara Estate (Enmore). When the Estate closes, where [can] people get jobs – families are going to break up; market people will not get sales; a lot of people at the Estate owe mortgage,” highlighted the Estate’s Field Secretary.
“This announcement which Agriculture Minister Noel Holder made is not a wise decision. I think he should pack up and go, and the President needs to intervene in this matter,” Prashad further stressed.
Fellow worker and father of two, Mayaram Sundar also noted the hardships his family would face. The harvester, who has been employed for 19 years, told
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Guyana Times that without a job, his son’s education may be held up if he could not find the means to support him. He also suggested that severance pay was a temporary benefit.
“If you say you will pay severance, how long will the severance last?” Sundar stressed.
“Tolly”, a greens and provisions vendor and mother of six, stressed that she was already facing challenges. She stated that four of her children were in school, with a daughter writing her CXC exam and a son writing his in 2018, months after the Estate will close.
“I have six children to maintain and [buying and selling greens] is the only thing I does do here. I got children going to school; books very expensive and passage for them to go to school, so I would like if the Estate could not close down,” she appealed.
“I got bills to pay and the things not selling, because the Estate closing…people stop buying, since Saturday the stand is there…if the estate close, the [workers] can’t buy, so we [wouldn’t] have no income to come from here… [Minister Holder] shouldn’t close down the Estate ‘cause it’s a lot of workers who’re supporting we out here,” “Tolly” posited.”
Nandanie Deosurran, another vendor, called on the President to look into her plight, saying that the Estate should not be closed.
Speaking on behalf of young people in the community, a self-identified youth leader in Enterprise and a union secretary, Romel Putulall, also noted the hardships which would befall wide cross-sections of residents in various
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