The Federation of Indepen-dent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) said on Friday it has noted with “deep concern” the recent remarks on the privatization of sugar, Guyoil and the state media by Brigadier (ret’d) David Granger who is the Presidential candidate of the PNCR.
FITUG said in a press release that it is suggesting strongly that the PNCR candidate “reviews his position with respect to sugar at this stage.”
In the meantime, FITUG said it wonders whether Granger’s policy of privatization will take into account the socio-economic dislocation, the profit-oriented private sector employers would cause when those owners implement cost-cutting, widespread closure of cultivations, redundancy of workers, etc. Had sugar been privatized during Hoyte’s period, FITUG contended, the “socio-economic dislocation of large numbers of wage earners would have been disastrous and so would be the consequences today.”
FITUG noted that as a responsible trade union grouping and a national institution of working-class orientation, it respects the views of all candidates who would be president, while defending its right to disagree, strongly sometimes, with those views.
According to FITUG, “Mr. Granger’s declared intention and policy of economic reform seems to be synonymous with the Washington Consensus which is so much discredited today and is wreaking havoc especially to the millions of ordinary people throughout the world. He is clear that he will divest the ownership and management of sugar from any State-associated entity. Under Granger, GuySuCo as currently constituted, will go.”
FITUG said further that as a highly concerned stakeholder it feels constrained to react to Granger’s declaration.
“We first wonder whether this is the position of the Party – the PNCR – or it is the preserve of the Brigadier-Candidate,” FITUG said.
Just this May Day, FITUG continued, sugar workers attached to its major affiliate, GAWU, marched with placards proclaiming “No To Privatization of the Sugar Industry’.
This typifies, the release noted, the feelings of the industry’s workers and at least at this stage FITUG and those workers realize that it was their toil and sweat which kept the sugar industry alive enough to be the lynchpin of the national economy for decades.
Sugar is the foreign exchange earner of consistent significance and the major contributor to Guyana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), FITUG added.
It noted that those sugar workers also experienced the failure, near catastrophic, of the foreign Booker-Tate management team in the later years of its contract.
“This is evidence that the question of privatization of sugar must attract widespread stakeholder consideration and consultation at the appropriate time. Privatization must not be purely an election mode issue or football. Sugar still employs thousands and has other thousands of dependents. One-fifth of Guyana’s population is dependent daily on the sugar industry,” FITUG asserted.
It also underscored that it “vehemently abhors this policy of privatization, which includes Guyoil and the state media,” which Granger proposes at this stage of Guyana’s economic and industrial development.
FITUG also advised that “privatization as an element of economic reform demands deep thought, management guarantees, political will and national goodwill.”
