Meeting on who represents Barama workers set for today

The meeting that was slated for last Friday to thrash out which union represents Barama Company Limited (BCL) workers has been postponed to today.

After the company had announced that it would be laying off more workers, in addition to the 180 who were previously retrenched, the Ministry of Social Protection’s Department of Labour had invited the company along with the Guyana Labour Union (GLU) to a meeting. However, the company had earlier reported to Stabroek News that the GLU had not represented the workers since 2010 and that the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) had taken over representation since the beginning of the year.

However, the Ministry is contending that the GLU was the last recognized union for the workers which the Head of the GLU, Carvil Duncan says was accurate and that the confusion was caused because of an error by the Ministry.

Duncan explained to Stabroek News on Monday that because of unforeseen circumstances the meeting did not take place and was postponed to today.

The Ministry’s attention was drawn to the company after it announced last month that it was not interested in renewing its 25-year agreement with the government and as such 500 workers would be retrenched. However, General Manager of Barama, Mohindra Chand had later explained that the 180 workers that were initially laid off had been included in the 500 and as such only 320 workers (including expatriates) will be laid off in the next three months as the company is in the process of closing down its forest operations.

The Ministry of Natural Resources had said that in 2015, at the request of Barama for a renewal of its contract, Cabinet gave its ‘no objection’ to the continuation of the arrangement but recommended the convening of a Task Force to examine the request.

This Task Force was seen as necessary given the “rapacious activities” of some foreign companies operating in the forests of Guyana, and “some not so positive observations that had been expressed about Barama in particular,” the ministry had said in a statement.

The statement said that the Task Force met on several occasions and visited Barama’s operations at Buck Hall, Essequibo, following which the legal consultant began reviewing the existing contract, forest concessions, and tax incentives previously granted to the company, while other members evaluated workers’ rights, value-added operations and environmental management practices, among other things.

However, the company has since opted to decline the renewal of the contract.