The following is the full text of a statement from the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU):
“FORMER Mayor Pandit Ubraj Narine spoke about the sugar industry in a promotion that appeared on June 19, 2025, on the social media pages of the online news outfit, Village Voice.
The former mayor, who seems to be seeking to bolster his waning political star, denounced President Irfaan Ali’s and his government’s efforts to sustain and revive the sugar industry.
Straight from the opposition’s playbook, Pandit Narine has engaged in deception and dishonesty. This is very concerning from someone who occupies the role of a religious leader.
The now-ex-Mayor rhetorically asked who ignored the sugar workers’ suffering. In our view, Pandit Narine should be ashamed to even pose such a question.
It does not require an extensive examination to know who ignored the workers’ trials and tribulations. The facts speak for themselves. When the former Mayor’s party occupied the ranks of government between 2015 and 2020, this was the treatment meted out to the sugar workers:
Sending home some 7,000 sugar workers – the largest retrenchment exercise in post-independent Guyana; No pay rise between 2015 and 2020, effectively keeping workers at 2014 pay levels for five years; Arbitrary withdrawal of benefits and conditions; Ignoring workers’ rights set out in agreements and laws; Haughtiness and arrogance by the then GuySuCo management, among other things.
In that period, sugar workers’ real wages fell dramatically. While they regressed, they saw their colleagues in other sections of the state’s employ benefit from pay rises and other improvements. The life and well-being were sucked out from scores of communities across the sugar belt. Wasn’t this ignoring workers suffering?
The treatment sugar workers, their families, and communities faced during the Coalition government’s term was evident and palpable. It was a naked betrayal of the ‘Good Life’ promise, a departure from the big pay rises promised and the talk of safeguarding the sugar industry.
In the past five years, sugar workers have been treated with respect, equity, and justice. There are active efforts to rebuild the destruction caused by the coalition and to restore what was broken.
There is a conscious and clear commitment to safeguard the industry, and recognising the tangible socio-economic value while aiming to exploit its potential.
“While they will seek to deceive and mislead, the truth is well-known. No amount of propaganda can change the facts.”