FOR years, local sugar workers have called for better conditions and support to care for their families. This is being advanced slowly.
In its manifesto, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), promised to rescue the nation’s productive sector. This included the re-opening of sugar estates which has re-energised the local economy in the sugar communities; pursuing product diversification which has provided retraining and employment opportunities for workers; establishing transparent private sector partnerships in the sugar sector; lending support to private

cane farmers; providing transitional support in areas where sugar estates were closed and working to solve the problems of the industry as a whole by firstly bringing the industry to break-even status and then to profitability, by ensuring better management and greater efficiency through retooling, mechanisation, product diversification and private participation.

General Secretary (GS) of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), Aslim Singh, in a recent interview shared several enhancements in the sugar industry which aim to better the lives of sugar workers across Guyana.

Singh highlighted that in the last five years, a major achievement accomplished by GAWU since it was recognised in 1976, is the securing of a three-year pay-rise agreement with the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo).
The General Secretary noted sugar workers enjoyed 10 per cent, eight per cent and then a nine-percentage increase. According to him, workers have been assured that there is certainty in their pay increases.

He recalled the commitment to increasing the minimum wage in the sugar industry to $100,000, something he posited will help sugar workers to improve their lives. Additionally, there will be negotiations for new production incentives, allowing workers to have certain production targets depending on the job being done.

Singh said, “So you know, there are a number of efforts being made to improve workers’ welfare through increased income, through representation, through looking at benefits, but even advocating on our general advocacy on workers’ behalf, looking at things such as taxes.”

The General Secretary pointed out that with support from the government, there has been more focus on interventions in sugar factories, most of which sought to improve sugar-cane supply, productivity and production.
He opined that now a greater focus has been placed on improving the efficiency of the factories.

Singh mentioned that when the sugar industry was miniaturised under the previous government, it was starved of a number of capital investments, programmes and initiatives that were in the pipeline.