Sugar severance pay from Monday – Minister Gaskin

Minister of Business, Dominic Gaskin announced Friday morning that sugar workers retrenched from the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) will begin to receive their severance pay from Monday, January 29, 2018.

Sugar workers cheered to the announcement at a meeting Gaskin and other government ministers organised with the retrenched workers from the East Demerara Estate at Enmore, East Coast Demerara.

An estimated 4, 000 workers were made redundant by GuySuCo on December 29, 2017. The National Assembly on January 19, 2018, approved $1.9 billion to pay the first tranche of severance.

Workers who are entitled to severance pay totalling $400, 000 and under have been promised their full severance by the end of the month.  The others were told they will get 50% of their severance at the end of this month and the other 50% by the end of the year.

Gaskin told workers that they weren’t being abandoned.

Cheers also rang out at the Enmore Estate Staff compound when Gaskin declared that the downfall of sugar industry had nothing to do with them, but that the closure of the estates were as a result of bad investments, bad management and bad leadership.

News Room will keep you updated as this meeting develops.

See previous stories here: https://admin.newsroom.gy/2018/01/26/none-of-you-will-be-beggars-or-paupers-broomes-tells-retrenched-sugar-workers/

https://admin.newsroom.gy/2018/01/26/enmore-workers-protest-ahead-of-meeting-with-ministers/