Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder has announced that, hopefully, by the end of this week, the over 300 former workers of the Wales Sugar Estate may be paid their severance.
“I am ?pleased to report that our caring government, having invested $1B per month for the survival of the sugar industry since 2015, over $37B, has paid severance to all employees who were severed at the end of 2017. It was done on November the 30th.”

“The Wales Estate workers have not been paid and hopefully they might be paid by the end of this week,” Holder said in the National Assembly on Wednesday.

More than 3,000 redundant Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) workers received the remainder of their severance payment on Friday, November 30th. Earlier in November, the sum of almost $2.5B was unanimously approved in the National Assembly to cater for the remaining severance to a total of 4,723 sugar workers.

They had previously paid sugar workers whose severance packages were $500,000 or less in full through a supplementary budgetary provision of $1.931Billion. The move comes as the Government had promised that before the year end, all sugar workers would be paid their monies owed.

However, Holder was keen to explain the reason for the delay for some ex-Wales Estate workers. In 2016, an agreement was made to commence payment of the severance packages by May that year to workers who opted not to work at the Uitvlugt Estate, following the closure of Wales several months earlier. However, just before the scheduled date for payment of the severance packages, Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU) and the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE) sought and received an order of the court which stopped GuySuCo from making the payments.

Presenting further explanation, Holder said: “The Wales Estate is a different kettle of fish. They were severed at the end of 2016 and some of them were offered employment. Those who were not needed were severed and received their severance. Those who were offered employment at Uitvlugt, approximately half of those accepted and were taken from Wales to Uitvlugt every day. The others did not accept the offer.

“This went to court and the court was to decide having offered a person employment whether he can still opt for severance. Circumstances overtook that situation at the end of 2017 when the Wales Estate along with Rose Hall, Enmore and Skeldon were divested. GuySuCo no longer owned Wales and could no longer raise the issues that they are offering people employment and they continued working at Wales so we decided to settle.”
Meanwhile, an order from the court has stated that the government must pay interest on the amount due to ex-workers and Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo has committed that the government will respect the ruling of the court.