Dear Editor,
I note from Stabroek News, January 1 edition, under the caption ‘Commission of Inquiry report inflates sugar workers’ wages -GAWU’ that the union at its end-of-year press briefing is positing that the COI’s report has “grossly exaggerated” the wages and salaries of the sugar workers. Given the recent imbroglio, which remains unresolved, between the union and GuySuCo on the latter’s insistence not to negotiate an increase in wages for the sugar workers, and its reluctance not to move from its original offer on the annual production bonus, the level of wages and salaries must be a critical point for the union in the COI report.
Editor, if indeed the union’s assertion is correct, then the figures in the COI report represent an act of dishonesty and mischief, and have misguided the nation and the government.
Again, if the union is correct, then I do not think that the President of Guyana should take lightly a major misrepresentation in a report that has cost the taxpayers of this country approximately $80M to produce, since it’s an embarrassment to the government.
I would refute any claim from this commission that the “gross exaggeration” is either a mistake or an oversight, since it had requested an extension of more than a month to present a final report, and subsequently there were several high level discussions with the government on it.
There could be no denial that the levels of wages and salaries must have been a central point in all the discussions, and maybe the figures in the report could have informed the decision not to negotiate an increase in wages; but then again, the company’s executives must have known that the levels of wages and salaries had been “grossly exaggerated”. It all seems like a tangled web of deceit.
Yours faithfully,
Rajendra Parmanand
