The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) yesterday convened a Business, Financial and Investment Forum in a bid to provide recently laid-off sugar workers with options to use their severance payments wisely.
The forum was held at the Enmore Community Centre yesterday morning and saw contributions from the business community, including the Private Sector Commission, the Small Business Bureau, the Guyana Stock Exchange, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, insurance companies, commercial banks and the Institute of Private Enterprise Development.
GuySuCo’s Corporate Communications Manager Audreyanna Thomas told Stabroek News that the forum allowed persons to see the “human face” of GuySuCo. “Yes, as a business we found ourselves in a situation where we had to lay off four thousand employees and that’s a difficult situation and we are not happy to have done that. However, the Sustainable Communities [Programme] and Alternative Livelihood Initiative is our response to try to do two things: counteract the shock from the redundancy and to absorb some of it from the ex-employees, their families and the communities,” Thomas said.
