By Fareeza Haniff
The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) plans to terminate 957 more employees in the near future, with 300 to go by the end of this month, Chief Industrial Relations Manager, Deodat Sukhu confirmed to the News Room on Monday, January 22, 2018.
In a telephone interview, Sukhu revealed that the Corporation is moving to sever some clerical, mechanical tillage and field workshop employees who were retained at the Skeldon, Rose Hall, Enmore and Wales Estates when the majority of workers were sent home on December 29, 2017.
He explained that GuySuCo will retain employees who provide Drainage and Irrigation services and those who provide security; however, some workers who were promised additional D&I work will have to be severed as an arrangement that GuySuCo was working on did not bear fruit.
“The people in drainage and the pump will be retained, Government will usurp the responsibility of draining the coastland; we can’t just send home those persons. The clerical staff will have to be retained and as we complete those tasks, they will so be interviewed in the presence of the Union by the Corporation and will be given notice (of severance). The people in the field doing mechanical tillage were kept for a D&I project, which is no longer on board; they will be severed,” Sukhu told News Room.
Close to 4,000 workers had their employment terminated on December 29 last as the Government moves to consolidate sugar production.
As a matter of fact, Sukhu told News Room that in addition to the 4,000 already terminated, 957 more employees, including 300 security workers, will be sent home across the four estates.
This will take effect once the Special Purpose Unit (SPU) takes full control of GuySuCo’s assets.
“We have to sever every employee at all four estates,” Sukhu said.
He further noted, “NICIL [the SPU] is doing us a favour by allowing those people to stay in the compound to carry out those tasks which include people from HR [Human Resources] and Finance to manage the store, and you have people from the sluice – mechanical tillage – and then we have people who are looking at the cultivation to see that people don’t burn cane, tamper with the factory and tamper with the equipment.”
According to Suku, “Security is still there…until NICIL takes over properly, we can’t sever those people. We will severe field workshops and mechanical tillage and some of the clerical staff and when we are apprised that NICIL will take over security fully, then we will have to sever them. We just can’t move security out.”
This week, GuySuCo will transfer 30 employees from the bagging area at Rosehall to the Albion Estate, Sukhu said.
Meanwhile, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), in a statement on Monday, noted that “several hundred workers retained at Skeldon, Rose Hall, East Demerara and Wales Estate, after the recent deluge of dismissals mere weeks ago, would soon be made additionally redundant.”
GAWU said that the “sad process of informing the identified workers would begin sometime soon with their redundancy becoming effective not too long from now.”
The union further noted, “from all appearances, the Government and the GuySuCo are ill-prepared and clearly incapable of dealing with the consequences that have flowed from these callous decisions they made.
“Our Union believes that it’s still not too late to reverse the decisions and re-open the estates especially given the situation that we are seeing playing out with the workers at this time.”
