Sugar workers who were affected by the closure of sugar estates under the previous government will now each benefit from a $250,000 grant. This is in addition to the severance packages that many of them were already paid.
The money is to be paid out to the workers before the end of January next year.
Workers from the Enmore, Rose Hall and the Skeldon estates are slated to benefit. The announcement was made by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo during a visit to the Berbice area on Monday.
“Each sugar worker, each sugar worker who was severed, would also get another $250,000 on their severance. That would be between $1.7 and $1.8 billion, because we have 7,000 workers who were severed who will all get that. If this is crucial, it is important that we fix this”, the Vice President said.
The Government has been reopening the closed estates and rehiring many of the workers who were laid off.
Following the announcement by the Vice President, the Guyana Agriculture and General Workers Union, GAWU said it welcomes the support being offered to the sugar workers.
“The Government must have taken account of the socio-economic tribulations that the workers encountered following estate closure. As the ILO study on the impact of estate closure outlined, the pangs of hardship and despair confronted a great lot of our Guyanese brothers and sisters. That study confirmed that the workers and their family’s lives and well-being were significantly set back and indeed some may never be able to make up the ground that they lost,” GAWU said in a statement today.
Although the Government continues to pump billions of dollars into the problematic sugar industry with little to no returns, GAWU has reiterated a decision to close estates has no sincere economic or social rationale.
“It is now documented history of the decline in standard-of-living that sugar workers faced at the hands of the Coalition. Successive years of no pay increase, the arbitrary withdrawal of benefits and a seeming policy to punish the industry extracted a significant toll on the workers. We believe they too are equally as deserving, and we urge the Government to consider extending its support to all sugar workers. We believe it will help to alleviate the many burdens the workers had to contend with during the term of the Coalition in office,” GAWU said.
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