The AFC views the 3% increase to sugar workers by the Ganga Tribunal Award as extremely harsh.  The Party did not expect the Tribunal to award anything more than this, which was Guysuco’s proposal, but what makes it harsher still is that the Award will not have to be mandatorily disbursed immediately so that sugar workers can use this money for the holiday season.

 The high cost of living and unconscionable 16% VAT will mean that sugar workers, like all other workers in Guyana, will experience a bleak Christmas and New Year. This is the treatment this so-called working class Jagdeo Administration is meting out to sugar workers, whilst he and his various entourages will be on multiple tours overseas.

 The pathetic financial situation at Guysuco is no fault of the sugar workers.  This almost bankrupt status is a direct result of micro-management by President Jagdeo and his highly favoured Agriculture Minister, Robert Persaud, under whose tenure the industry has been reduced to its knees.  For example, it was their flouting of the European Union’s extended deadline for a Business Plan which caused the Company to bear a loss of $1.6B.  Nor did any of the millions of Euros intended for the sugar industry, which was given by the European Union to soften the impact of the phased reduction of preferential prices, ever go to Guysuco. Instead these millions of Euros were spent as President Jagdeo decreed.

 The AFC advises that, in addition to a number of other measures, the immediate appointment of a competent and professional Board of Directors of Guysuco, which will not be influenced by

ill-decided Presidential and Ministerial directives, will start the process of recovery.  For starters, all persons who are mere sinecures, like Donald Ramotar, or those with a history of bankruptcy, like Geeta Singh Knight, must immediately be removed. GAWU should insist upon this at the threat of and, alternatively, actual industrial action.

 Sugar workers, too, must realize these root causes of their present economic dilemma and start a process of demanding and opting for change.

                                                                                                                                                End.

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