Solidarity Platform continues to support the dismissed Republic Bank (Guyana) workers’ efforts to clear their names and joined them in their thirtieth picketing exercise outside the bank’s New Market Street office yesterday.
While the number of supporters was small and only four of the six ex-workers attended as two have since migrated, they and their supporters said they would remain strong.
According to a press release, during the picketing exercises “hundreds of ordinary people, many of them customers of Republic Bank have been made aware of the injustice perpetrated on the workers, particularly the two young mothers.” It also said a petition with over 3,000 signatures from persons from across the country called on the bank to “recognize the continued injustice” being perpetrated on the workers.
The group said despite initiatives from the Guyana Council of Churches and the Guyana Trades Union Congress, the bank has resolutely refused to cooperate in resolving “this injustice and to restore the good names of the employees” although they have garnered other benefits such as improved security at ATMs and increasing awareness among the bank’s staff about union representation.
The bank had said that it had lost confidence in the employees following an $8 million theft from its ATM at Kitty last February. It said the six employees were the only ones with the access codes and must have been involved and severed their employment several weeks after suspending them. Since then, the employees have been fighting the decision saying that the bank found no evidence implicating them in the theft.
The bank, through its then Managing Director Michael Archibald, had admitted that no evidence was found against the employees but indicated that they were the only ones who knew the combination number and one or more of them must have been involved in the theft. He had said that the bank had lost confidence in the workers and therefore severed them, giving them more severance pay than the laws of Guyana stipulate. However, the ex-workers had said that senior personnel knew the combination numbers and that no amount of money could restore their dignity or respect.
