PRIME Minister Moses Nagamootoo has assured sugar workers that the government will always stay at their side and do all it can to ensure the sugar industry returns to economic viability.

The prime minister made the solemn promise yesterday at the honouring of the five Enmore Martyrs who were brutally gunned down by British officers some 67 years ago.

On June 16, 1948, Lallabagee Kissoon, Pooran, Rambarran, Dookhie and Harry were slaughtered while fighting for better conditions and recognition of a union of their choice.
Nagamootoo, a former People’s Progressive Party (PPP) executive, said many had come before and many had died, but the Enmore Five stood out as they took a stand that eventually paved the way for all workers to be represented by their union at the bargaining table.
Nagamootoo was at the forefront of the struggle for recognition of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU), which was eventually achieved in 1976 after martyrdom, violence and imprisonment.
This struggle, he said, is deep within his veins, pointing out that in 2010 he cared less when former President Bharrat Jagdeo and then PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar threatened to expel him from the Party for a letter he wrote in the press after the two had threatened to de-recognise GAWU.
When GAWU was threatened, not even Komal Chand, the President of the Union, stood up in its defence, a passionate Nagamootoo recalled.
BETRAYERS
“Those who claim to be friends of sugar workers have betrayed them; it is because I feel it deeply in my veins that I can tell you this today,” he said.
In the latter years of the PPP in power, the sugar industry was on a downward spiral, and just a few days after assuming power, the APNU+AFC Administration learned that GuySuCo had money remaining to pay workers only for a week.

“I could not believe they had bankrupted the sugar industry, and placed the lives of 16,000 sugar workers at risk. They had borrowed billions of dollars; they had stolen the pension [NIS pension] of sugar workers; not paid it into NIS, $1.2 billion, that even if the factories closed there would have been nothing for sugar workers and just recently [they] deducted $225 million from sugar workers’ pay to be given to their credit union and did not pay the money,” Nagamootoo revealed.
He said GAWU was silent when the industry was going under, but disclosed that the Government will halt the downward slide. It has made a decision to inject billions of dollars to bail the industry out.
“This Government under President David Granger will do everything possible to bring the sugar industry back on its feet,” the prime minister said to resounding applause.
The Government will today hold talks with officials from India, Cuba and the United Kingdom, all of whom have indicated an interest in reviving the sugar industry. Talks are also slated to be held with the European Union to discuss the cooperation agreement with Guyana to support the sugar industry and other sectors.

TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
The prime minister added: “No one would have told me that we could have spent $47 billion on a single sugar factory that could not produce what the factory produced when the Enmore Martyrs were alive… and so when we asked where the money went, we were told that it was to restructure the industry. How much the former leaders loved Guyana that they were turning the industry around, they turned it upside down!”
The prime minister also revealed that Parliament gave $17 billion to bail the industry out, but to no avail, and when the question was asked ‘How many went to sugar workers,’ there was no answer.
This is why, he said, the Government felt rightly that the GuySuCo Board should be fired, and did just that. A forensic audit has also been ordered to find out where all the money went.
Nagamootoo also said it was disappointing to hear that when Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Raj Singh was given marching orders, GAWU found the move disturbing.
“They were not disturbed by the billions of dollars that went down the drain; they were disturbed when we tell Raj Singh you must go. And so today, as we remember the struggle of our fallen heroes, as we pay tribute to the relatives and descendants that they are proud heirs of great fighters whose names have gone down the annals of history. They will forever raise their heads in pride and in honour knowing that their relatives and their foreparents have struggled to make sugar an industry on which so much depend. And because so much depends on sugar, my Government and the Government of David Granger will leave no stone unturned to find answers as to where we go from here,” the prime minister said.
Sugar workers were also slaughtered in 1896, 1903, 1905, 1913 and 1939 while fighting for better pay and better working conditions.
ULTIMATE SACRIFICE
President of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) Carvil Duncan, said that in 1948 they (sugar workers) again paid the ultimate sacrifice.
But he said it happened so that all can enjoy better living conditions today, pointing out that while sugar is sweet, the history has been bitter.
GAWU International Affairs Secretary, Aslim Singh said the blood of the martyred workers has fertilised the struggles of the working people, as he paid tribute to late founders of the PPP and Presidents of Guyana Dr Cheddi Jagan and his wife Janet Jagan for their roles in leading the charge.
He called for unity among the working class, and urged that the sugar industry should not be privatised. Some 16,000 persons benefit directly from the industry and thousands more indirectly.
Singh contended that with prudent management, the sugar industry can be revived again as it did in the early 1990s. He also called for the rights of workers to be respected.
General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), Lincoln Lewis, who returned to the annual remembrance ceremony of the martyrs at Enmore after more than a decade, said the struggle of the workers was part of a wider struggle to free Guyana from colonial rule.
The GTUC, he also pointed out, made the case for construction of the monument to remember the martyrs, and it happened under the People’s National Congress (PNC) administration of Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.
The Enmore Martyrs Monument was designed by Dennis Williams and erected by the Zenith Industrial and Construction Co-operative Society. It was unveiled by Prime Minister Burnham on June 16, 1977, the 29th anniversary of the death of the five martyrs.
The remembrance yesterday was attended by Government ministers, representatives of a number of trade unions, the diplomatic corps, relatives of the martyrs, sugar workers and residents.

 
By Tajeram Mohabir