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Diamond cane-cutters to receive severance today

Jun 14, 2011 News

A total of 381 workers from the Diamond Estate are to be paid their severance today at the Diamond Secondary School, says Komal Chand, President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU).
The workers, 375 of them GAWU members, and the remainder from the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE), have been asking for severance pay since in 2009.
With Diamond Estate closed, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) had been using the harvesters to supply canes to the LBI Estate, East Coast Demerara.
However, the harvesters have been clamouring for pay-offs.
In October of that year, GAWU officially approached GuySuCo, signaling the intentions of the field workers to be paid off, but talks fell through and the union went to court.
On May 17th, President Bharrat Jagdeo had met with the sugar workers at the Diamond Secondary School and announced that it will release $300M for the payout.
Jagdeo told the gathering that the intervention was made because of the “the financial reality” of GuySuCo, which is in financial trouble.
Jagdeo had acknowledged that the court matter would have taken too long to resolve the issue.
Chand, who was also at the meeting in May, had also announced that GAWU was willing to withdraw the court matter once the payout was made.
According to the union leader, yesterday, initially GuySuCo would have been paying the field workers who are currently on the payroll.
“However, GAWU made representations to the Corporation and asked for workers who were on the job as at October 2009, when we started negotiations, to be included. These workers are part of the list they sent us last Thursday. We have seen it.”
GuySuCo has been moving to create a lean operation since introducing a turnaround plan a few years ago.
However, the going has been tough for the state-owned entity which faced a massive 36% price cut by the Europe Union and with falling workers’ attendance, the challenges have been mounting.
Last year, the industry recorded one of its worst performances in two decades.
While the first crop was the highest in eight years, it was still way off-target.
This year, GuySuCo has set a 300,000 tonne target but workers’ attendance has been again proving a major headache.

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