Sugar workers who have been made redundant will be paid part of their severance from Monday, January 29 2017. This was disclosed by Business Minister, Dominic Gaskin earlier today (Friday) during a meeting with the workers of the East Demerara Estate located in Enmore, East Coast Demerara.
This announcement was met with loud cheers and smiles by the sugar workers who have been eagerly awaiting their monies.
In what is described as the largest retrenchment by a private or public corporation in recent history, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) as part of its plans to restructure the sugar industry has dismissed in excess of 4000 sugar workers from various estates.
On January 19 2018, Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan had announced that redundant sugar estate workers whose severance payments are $500,000 and less will be paid in full by the end of January 2018.
This was after a supplementary provision of $1.931B was approved by the National Assembly.
Jordan had explained that, the total amount of severance to be paid out to the excess of 4,000 sugar workers is somewhere around $4.24B.
However, at present, only $0.5B of the $6.3B to be transferred to the GuySuCo in 2018 is earmarked for severance payment. As such, the estimated amount to be paid by the end of January 2018 is $2.431B.
During the budget debates, when Minister of Agriculture, Noel Holder was probed as to when the second half of the severance payments will be made, he (Holder) replied “before December 31.”
