THE Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) has called out Innovative Mining Inc. on the recent incident at the company where a Russian security guard physically abused a Guyanese cook.
Noting that the action is intolerable, GAWU in a press release, said it was disturbed to see that type of physical abuse against a Guyanese. According to the union, the altercation shows a clear disconnect between the organisation’s management and basic human right policies that are expected to be extended to all persons in the working spectrum. “For the GAWU, which draws a large number of members from the sugar industry, the scene jarred our memory back to the time of the plantocracy. It was a painful period where workers rights were ignored or wantonly trampled upon and workers were seen as means of production rather than living, breathing human beings. It was from the concerted struggle of the working-class and their allies that workers were able to put such wretched relations into the dustbin of history,” the GAWU press release stated.

The union noted that while it is cognisant of the role of foreign investors in advancing development, investors as well as local business persons must, in all instances, be respectful of the rights of all Guyanese workers.
Since the circulation of the video, the Ministries of Natural Resources, Home Affairs and Labour have launched a joint investigation into the operations of Innovative Mining Inc. GAWU anticipates that these ministries will swiftly and condignly deal with the actions by Innovative Mining Inc..
“Though heartened by the swift response of relevant Government agencies, we expect that those in the breach will be condemningly dealt with and be made to answer for their actions. The incident highlights the need for greater scrutiny of what takes place in our workplaces, especially in the interior. Of course, the sad situation, we note, cannot be delinked from the dismantling of the Ministry of Labour by the former government,” the GAWU statement read.

Labour Minister, Joseph Hamilton, in a recent interview with this publication, had indicated that the Ministries of Labour and Natural Resources had initiated investigations into the company’s Cuyuni-Mazaruni operations after receiving several complaints about non-compliance with Guyana’s labour laws.
“I had received reports of labour breaches by the company which is Innovative Mining; so a little while before this video circulated, I had the Chief Labour Officer summon them to a meeting …. I summoned them to deal with labour breaches, that is, not paying overtime and the issue of not giving leave and those kinds of issues,” said Hamilton. The Natural Resources Ministry through the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) has also launched an investigation to ascertain who is conducting operations at the mining site. Minister Hamilton explained that the laws indicate that non-Guyanese can only be granted licences for large- scale mining concessions, not medium or small-scale as is currently being done at the site. “This claim originally was given as a Guyanese medium-scale miner to one of the Jagmohans. The law does not allow for expatriates to own mining land that are medium-scale and small-scale and so at the level of the Ministry of Natural Resources, I communicated, myself and Minister Bharrat, we have been working on this matter. He has instructed the GGMC to indicate how you have expatriates on the mining land,” the minister said.