Dear Editor,
I was surprised first, then startled by the developments involving the sugar workers formerly at the Wales Estate.
I was surprised by the pictures and surrounding news story in Stabroek News where it appeared that the workers once attached to the Wales Estate of GuySuCo were reduced to begging publicly for severance pay due. If severance was being withheld or denied, my first reaction was that the government had erred egregiously and had backed itself into a bad place. Pursuant to binding agreements and sound industrial relations practice, I thought that the government would be reneging on its obligation, and that that was wrong and unacceptable.
There then came the part that startled. It was that alternative employment was offered at Uitvlugt. Yet this boon (and it is a boon, all things considered) is denounced, scorned, and dismissed. Why?
I hear it is more than ten miles, as memorialised in the union/government agreement executed. I hear it is the heavy burden of having to travel some thirty-two miles. That can be a sacrifice for some in terms of time and distance. But I think of opportunity, family, continuity, and rationality. I thought that there would be the individual and collective (and with union overseers, too) rationale that this opportunity is about continuity in working and earning and providing. I am startled that workers without a job or prospect are not incentivised to seize the moment. I am startled, although I should not be, that the political guiding hands see this as another circumstance to be exploited for the worst possible motives.
To be sure the Wales sugar workers are asked to give up something, to sacrifice something. But so, too, are the taxpayers of this nation who are saddled with the bill of carrying a dying industry. And it is dying. My thinking is that any worker, in any industry, faced with the harsh reality of unemployment versus the call of a beckoning hand through a distant placement would grab the latter, even it is temporary or part-time. After all, it presents the situation where the severance owed can be saved for a later date, while adding to it through accepting work at Uitvlugt.
From my perspective, I do not see thirty-two miles in motorised, company funded transportation as an unbearable sacrifice. When compared to the billions called for on the part of many unwilling taxpayers, it pales into some insignificance.
Speaking again from my history, it is well-known that Wall Street is littered with boom and bust cycles. During times of decline, lots of giving up has to be done. These include pay cuts, pension changes, benefits squeezes, and generally doing more with less, which invariably mean long staggering hours. Sadly, what I hear here is an insistence on adherence to the letter of the law, and demands that ignore the hard diagnoses and the just as troubling prognoses that have bedeviled a business in acute distress for the longest time now.
I cannot help but think that this is more than the usual squabble over time and distance. I see this as another senseless opportunistic political gambit that submerges workers’ welfare, drives a wedge into government plans, and furnishes players with a wrecking ball to demolish government objectives. Some things speak for themselves; this is one of those things and times.
As the interest in turmoil persists, and clandestine calculations and hard choices are made about GuySuCo, the true state of this industry ought to be borne in mind by all concerned, which means every Guyanese. It is a heavy place, a disturbing place. Among the lessons of this life are these: there is a time for hoping; there is a time for crying and mourning. And there is also a time to move on through healing and regrouping and living again.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
