PM Nagamootoo pays lip service to sugar industry, says Union head

Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo is now being accused of delivering lip service, and changing like a “chameleon” when it comes to addressing the concerns of the sugar workers.
General Secretary of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), Seepaul Narine, has said, “While he (the PM) justifies unashamedly the cutting down of the sugar industry and the laying off of thousands, Mr Nagamootoo himself and his party have been saying that he is…a friend of the sugar workers’ union. ‘We are a friend of the sugar workers and we are there to strengthen your backbone’. What a friend indeed!” Narine said on Monday.
Narine called on Nagamootoo to get off his high horse, go into the villages, and interact with the workers who have lost their jobs, and tell them of the plan for the future.

He was at the time responding to the PM’s December 03, column titled ‘Different strategy in changing times.’
He noted that the Government’s callous move has resulted in the breadwinner for most families having been left without a job, resulting in the families being pushed further into poverty.
“Documents shared by the Government on Old Year’s Day last year pointed out that the industry’s real indebtedness stood at about G$17 billion at the end of October 2016, far from the number quoted by the PM. The G$85 billion debt flag waved at every possible chance by the PM and his cohorts is nothing more than a diversionary tactic to scare a section of the Guyanese public into supporting the very unsound plans it has for the industry. Such course, we repeat, will see thousands of workers as victims”.
He is urging the Prime Minister to check the facts before he pens another column.
Narine related that the Government has taken the sugar industry from the road to recovery and has reduced it to an industry now on life support. He further stated that, in the short time the APNU/AFC Administration have been in power, the production of GuySuCo has fallen by 35 per cent, and workers’ morale is at its lowest point. He referred to the more than 1,500 workers who have now lost their jobs pending the closure of the East Demerara Estate, and added that over 1,500 workers from East Demerara Estate are “being shown the gate, and cannot be told by the PM or his Government what workable plans they have for them.
“While touting the possibilities of self-employment for sugar workers, can the PM point to any concrete initiative implemented by his Government in this regard? Wales was shut down almost a year ago, and at this point in time, not one single success story is known, but we well know the misery and hopelessness that stalks the villages,” the statement read.
“While the PM speaks about State support to the industry, he forgets that it is the largest employer in the nation, and its operations touch so many lives across our country. Furthermore, he forgets, maybe conveniently, the industry’s huge contributions, financial and otherwise, to the progress of our country and welfare of the people,” the statement added.
Narine also noted that the Union would continue to fight for the rights of the workers.