– beyond President’s short-term intervention
Some of the 90-odd Lindeners now jobless following the closure of the Barama plywood factory concur that a long-term solution to the problem of unemployment in Linden and in the wider Region Ten will have to be found if the present mood of doom and gloom is to be lifted.
With most if not all of the now unemployed workers having lost income that is directly linked to their survival, the displaced Lindeners are under no illusion that President Bharrat Jagdeo’s intervention — a stipend of $25,000 for the next three months if they choose to go one day a week to learn computer skills — is more than a short-term measure.
What will interest them more is Barama’s response to the President’s thinly veiled threat of sanctions unless it moves with alacrity to get plywood production operations up and running.
Some of the displaced former Barama employees told Stabroek Business that they have began to alternative employment. With the prospects of finding jobs in Linden painfully slim, their searches, in most instances are taking them outside the community.
Nor has it escaped the beleaguered job seekers that their plight coincides with the absence of any mechanisms in Linden through which assistance can be found to support ventures designed to create employment. Plans for a revolving loan scheme to support small private sector ventures are yet to bear fruit despite the fact that millions of dollars have already been pumped into the venture.
On October 4, a boiler explosion at the company’s plywood factory led to the immediate closure of operations and the laying off of 274 employees until further notice. Barama, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Malaysian company Samling Global Limited was established here in 1991. The company’s plywood operation was set up in 1993 and its sawmill factory in 1996.
The circumstances of John Griffith, of resident of Wismar, who was employed with Barama for six years, mirror the plight of most of the displaced Lindeners. His search for alternative employment has already taken him to Guyana Gold Fields and Aroaima Mining Company. The Chinese-owned Bosai Minerals isn’t hiring. Only recently, Bosai and the majority Russian-owned Aroaima Bauxite Company sent off more than 100 workers. Last year’s downturn in global industrial production triggered a drastic reduction in the demand for bauxite and it will take time for the fortunes of the industry to change.
Griffith has decided to pursue every option available to him. His search for a job does not appear to have caused him to lose sight of the President’s offer. He says that the computer training offer, part of the package offered by the President earlier this week is “reasonable.” The classes, he said, are scheduled to be held in those communities where significant numbers of displaced workers reside and notification will be given regarding the commencement of the classes.
Griffith’s skills may, perhaps, render him more marketable than some of his colleagues. At Barama, he worked at the power station as an electrician. He is also as refrigeration and air conditioning technician, skills that bring him part-time jobs.
Jason Roberts, another of the displaced workers who chalked up six years of service with Barama as a Grade One Electrician, is also job-hunting in Linden and elsewhere. He wants the government to set up a garment factory and a sawmill in Linden to help alleviate the present high unemployment situation. Others may not be so marketable. A mother of three school-aged children who attended Monday’s meeting with the President told Stabroek Business that in the absence of alternative employment the stipend offer provides at least some temporary help. Declaring that she was not computer literate she appeared more inclined to expend her energies searching for another job. She worked with Barama for eight years.
Increased building costs
The Linden Chamber of Industry Com-merce and Development (LCICD), in an invited comment, said the closure of the company’s operations will have a knock-on effect on the building sector. It said building costs will increase and this will impact on both the housing and manufacturing sectors. The chamber is concerned about the knock-on effects on both employment and consumer goods prices arising out of the closure of Barama’s operations.
No loan scheme to the rescue
Close to a year since the materialization of the plan for the launch of the Linden Enterprise Network (LEN) as the successor to the Linden Economic Advancement Programme (LEAP), the scheme, aimed at providing micro loans to boost small scale private enterprise is still to get on its feet. Chairman of the Interim Management Committee of the Linden Local Authority Orin Gordon told Stabroek Business recently that at a meeting in September, it was disclosed that the funds LEN had were almost depleted. The entity, meanwhile, remains without a Board of Directors, a deficiency which Gordon considers to be the fault of government. LEN was expected to disburse new loans based on its collection of outstanding loans made available under the Linden Economic Advancement Fund (LEAF).
LEN General Manager Valarie Sharp has said that the entity was expected generate its own income through the collection of revenue from the business incubator inherited from LEAP as well as fees from loan services and rentals from office space in the former LEAP building and an industrial incubator at Kara Kara. Still, Sharpe said, while Lindeners are in need of funding for investment, LEN is still not in a position to meet those needs. Part of the problem of collecting outstanding loans, Sharpe said, reposes in the fact that LEN does not have a loans officer.
According to Gordon, even if the resources of defaulters on loans issued through LEAF were to be placed in foreclosure, those assets would still be inadequate to recover the full value of the loan amounts. For example, he pointed out that several of the assets would by now have depreciated in value adding that even assuming that those assets included saleable items the current depressed state of the Linden economy meant that there would be few if any buyers for them.
All this, of course, is occurring at a time when Lindeners are desperately seeking just the kind of relief that the LEN facility was supposed to offer. For the displaced Barama workers there could be a tough road ahead. Many of them are unlikely to find suitable employment elsewhere and those who do find work could quickly discover that travel costs will make a further dent in what are unlikely to be lucrative wage packets. Unless some greater measure of relief is found quickly, the former Barama workers could find themselves – like hundreds of other Lindeners – on the breadline.
