Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 30, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Late Tuesday evening, going on to midnight, a group of us traveled up to Cane Grove to do a movie. The team, which included Mark Benschop, Gerhard Ramsaroop and his wife, and Kojo McPherson, sought to film the paddy dust that spew from the huge silo when the mill is in operation.
We carried a powerful torch light so we could get perfect angles. That proved unnecessary.
Why midnight? Because when we were there two weeks, the mill management saw us and ceased operations. On Thursday night, we didn’t need torchlight. From the northern side of the mill, you saw before your very eyes, the mountain of dust that came your way, heading for the nearby residencies. We parked the car right at the site and within half an hour the front windscreen was enveloped.
What we witnessed last Tuesday evening in Cane Grove was ancient oligarchy in full battle dress as it was hundreds of years ago. The oligarch was the lord, the peasant his slaves and the oligarch was also the slave master of those in authority.
The cruel act is happening in 2012. The Government can simply tell the owner to stop his nonsense or he will be closed down. All the EPA has to do is to cite him for violation and close him down.
All the owner has to do is to spend funds that from all appearances he has to utilise a dust pan system. It would appear that either he cannot afford it (I doubt that) or he refuses to act because he as the oligarch controls the authority of the village and the centralised government in Georgetown. Why the PPP Government doesn’t move against this miller tells a tragic story of a tragic land named Guyana.
On Thursday morning, I was asked to visit Enmore where nine sugar workers were summarily dismissed for stealing what no one in this world believes. But more than that, this firing of the workers prove how incredibly stupid are the people that administer power in this land.
These were the very employees that were involved in strike action a few weeks ago. How stupid is the Guysuco leadership to think they can fool the Guyanese people. The very radical set that called the strike was targeted.
We come now to ashes. Do you know what they were accused of stealing? Well, in order not to invoke the wrath of the workers and their supporters who met us, we had to stifle our humour. If you have been in the countryside for more than a day, then you would know what a fireside is. It is used for cooking. It consists of a fourteen-inch pipe that is bent to look like a basin on which the foundation sits. A pipe of that type is not more than five hundred dollars. The workers were told that they stole four pieces of pipe used for fireside purposes.
I asked the Enmore Estate manager, Mr. Yedu Persaud for an interview. He suggested I talk to Guysuco’s human resource director, Jairam Petam at Ogle. Mr. Petam said he couldn’t be of much help to me since he didn’t fire the workers; it was the decision of Mr. Persaud. I went back to Persaud but he refused to speak to me.
When people like Persaud read what is written here they will accuse the press of not seeking the views of the other side. But he flatly refused to talk to me about the comical situation where workers, one of which had thirty years service, were fired for stealing four pieces of old pipe. It must be noted that when you are “summarily dismissed” you lose many of your benefits.
Against this background of terrible human rights violation, we have the words of Dr. Roger Luncheon who told the nation that the Government may not be finished with the freed treason accused.
Why should any Guyanese who lived under Dr. Luncheon’s draconian hand not believe him? So Luncheon decides who gets charged again once you are freed from the courts.
Under Dr Luncheon’s Government, there was passed a law that allows the state to appeal a non-guilty verdict from a jury trial. The state has appealed five such cases of murder. When I saw Dr Luncheon on the stand during his testimony on the King Kong libel trial, I pitied my country. Dr Luncheon had to be helped to walk up the court steps, couldn’t stand in the witness box, had to be helped to sit on his chair and helped to read documents. This is Guyana.
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