This week’s column resumes the discussion of employment in the forestry sector against the fourth cause singled out by Guyana’s Poverty Reduc-tion Strategy Programme (PRSP) as responsible for persistent poverty: “deterioration in the quantum and quality of social services” (PRSP 2001, p. 7). Here I look especially at employment of Guyanese in foreign-owned forest sector enterprises. This analysis is undertaken in the context of the question: Why is there persistent poverty in the interior alongside the parcelling out of Guyana’s best endowed forests in large-scale forestry concessions?
The official statistics on employment in the forestry sector are out of date and/or not disaggregated. The 1997/1998 Labour Force Survey lists 50,737 persons (Males 41,982; Females 8,755) as employed in ‘Agro-Forestry,’ which in that survey denotes ‘agriculture’ and ‘forestry’ as separate activities. The 2002/2003 census lists a total of 3,746 persons employed in ‘Forestry, Logging and Related Services,’ and 42,069 in ‘Agriculture, Hunting and Related Services.’ These official surveys suggest that full-time employment in the sector is low, which is not surprising given the low rates of pay, lack of contracts, job security, training opportunities and poor working conditions outlined in last week’s column.
A common theme in the diaspora is the exploitation, poor remuneration and disrespect shown to Guyanese who lack ‘papers’ (legal documentation), recognized skills certification, work experience abroad, or union or other representation. Forty years after Independence, Guyanese workers in the forestry sector suffer the same fate: as disrespected at home as are undocumented Guyanese abroad.
The Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) estimates that the forestry sector provides employment to about 15,000 persons, the majority in the small-scale sector. The small-scale forestry sector, allocated only one-fifth of the commercial forests, (and the most worked-over and worked-out forests) provides 75 per cent of forestry sector employment according to a Guyana Forestry Commission study in 2003.
At the time of negotiating Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) concessions, foreign-owned companies had emphasised the employment which they would bring in, but they have generated little sustainably in the way of employment or sustainable development at the local level. The quotas of expatriate workers are part of the FDI arrangements negotiated by Cabinet, and are not covered by the Forests Act or Forest Regulations. The Commis-sioner of Forests has said that the JaLing Company will be allowed to exceed its foreign worker quota of 20 per cent for 3-4 years because there were no local skills (Press conference with Minister for Forestry Robert Persaud, December 8, 2006). This position signifies official disregard of a contractual agreement, which itself is much weaker than OECD guidelines for multi-national enterprises recommend (see later).
In 2005, the biggest concession holder, with legal control of 26 per cent of State Production Forests, stated that its workforce totalled 1,100 workers (expatriate and Guyanese) in its logging (400 workers), milling (100 workers) and plywood factory (550 workers) operations (Sukhraj 2005). The downsizing of that company’s plywood production can be tracked in the quartering of its workforce in a decade – from 1,900 in 1995 to 1,750 in 1996, to 1,000 in 1997 and 550 in 2005. At the same time, Barama’s expatriate workforce is deployed across its sub-contracted concessions and in the Amerindian village lands of Akawini and St Monica, being logged through a ‘harvesting contract’ with another company named IWPI. Such arrangements were not mentioned in the original 1991 FDI agreement and probably not in the still-secret 2001 extended FDI agreement.
The Barama Company seems to be keeping to the overall limit of 15 per cent expatriate workforce by counting its unskilled local workers at the processing sites at Land of Canaan and Buck Hall. Foreign-recruited workers are sent with interpreters for technical training by the Guyana Forestry Training Centre (FTC), in effect reverse capacity building. And in spite of the exemptions from all taxes and duties, including import duties on fuel, the SGS Qualifor’s Public Summary quoted a CARICAD study that, “
