Following a meeting between the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) on Friday, an agreement was reached for sugar workers to receive pay increases.

GAWU noted in a statement on Friday that the Union’s delegation, comprising officials and representatives from the various estates, were informed by the sugar corporation that it approved certain pay increases to the sugar workers.

The union said it will refrain from disclosing the details of the agreement since the body and the workers are actively considering the company’s offer as it noted its struggles over the years to address the needs of sugar workers.

President David Granger, on Sunday last, assured thousands of Berbicians that the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) Government will return the once ailing sugar industry to profitability, if re-elected for a second term in office.

“I know the pain the sugar workers feel, but the sugar industry the PPP gave us could not be sustained,” he said at an election rally at Rose Hall.

His Administration, he assured the residents, will do everything in its power to protect and preserve the industry by keeping estates such as Albion fully functional.

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In 2017, the APNU+AFC Administration took a decision to consolidate cultivation at the Albion, Blairmont and Uitvlugt Estates in an attempt to reduce losses and increase profitability within sugar industry.

The government announced the closure of several sugar estates; initially the Wales sugar estate was named as the first to be closed one year after it was announced for closure.

The move by the government triggered protests led by pro-People’s Progressive Party (PPP) leaders who joined ranks with GAWU leaders on the West Demerara and later in the city.
Later several other estates in the Berbice belt were closed and these were also cited as being too costly to run. The opposition protested the move once more although the government made it clear that annual multi-billion dollar bailouts to the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) were hurting the economy.

But the move by the David Granger-government was an undertaking which was forecast and made known to the PPP-government way back in 1996 when the gloomy future of the sugar industry was written in black and white.

According to the draft National Development Strategy (NDS) of 1996, steps were urgently needed to be put into action and downsizing of the industry was suggested so that its sales could have been made profitable.

The undertaking, the NDS said, included the elimination of GuySuCo’s “least efficient components and relocate the labour force in more productive lines of work”. This effectively meant the closure of estates which were hampering the industry and the relocation of the labour force.

The PPP government was told that if by the end of the 1997 cane-harvesting cycle the Wales Sugar Estate was not able to reduce its production costs, the estate should be closed after that crop.

Additionally, the situation at the Uitvlugt and Enmore sugar estates faced an evaluation which also hinged on production costs, with the aim of making them viable by the year 2000, or phasing them out if they proved otherwise.

According to the 1996 report, the strategy proposed was an indirect response to trends in Guyana’s economy at the time. According to the report, they were needed in response to signals of reductions in labour turn-out for some of the Demerara estates.
“So it also is an acceleration of a natural process, undertaken for the sake of making the industry more competitive as soon as possible and also to avoid greater pressure on the public sector finances,” the report stated at the time.

Fast forward to the years after 2000, the PPP commenced the bailout process, with hefty sums to keep the industry afloat, the rising cost of production being the critical factor in the billions of taxpayers’ funds being turned over to GuySuCo.