More than 100 hampers distributed to female, redundant Berbice sugar workers

May 21, 2018 News

The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) together with the Guyana Solidarity Movement (GSM), a US based Non-Governmental Organization distributed over 100 hampers to all the women workers who were severed from the Rose Hall, Wales and Skeldon Sugar Estates, recently.

This was done in an effort to cushion the hardships the women and their families are currently facing since the closure of the estates.

One of the women receiving hampers.

Twenty-one female workers from the Rose Hall Estate received food hampers while thirty-eight females from the Skeldon Estate received their goodies. President of GAWU, Komal Chand, who was present at the distribution exercise, related that they are hoping to cover 180 women who were made redundant because of the closed estates.

“While this gesture might not satisfy your problems and your needs because of the way you were removed from your job without any notice studies, etc. We feel that this will help in a little way to mitigate the kind of hardship you are facing,” he told the former estate workers.

Meanwhile, former minister of Culture Youth and Sports Dr. Frank Anthony related that the members of GSM in New York know what it is like working on a sugar estate.

He added that it is for that reason that the members decided to help the affected women.

“Many of them got together; not that they are wealthy or anything; they are ordinary people, they probably doing a bit better than the rest of us here, but they got together and decided that they are going to put some money together and try their best to see how they can help,” Anthony stated.

The women expressed appreciation for the hampers while relating how difficult life has become as a result of the closure of the estates.