GUYANA | Seriously? Workers just demands, bullying ? Lincoln Lewis chides President Irfaan Ali

We must be unafraid to call a spade a spade. In oil-rich Guyana and the world’s fastest growing economy, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) is openly pursuing economic injustice against the working class and poor. The Bharrat Jagdeo/Irfaan Ali regime is bent on seizing total control of the nation’s economic wealth, and social, economic and political space.

Workers’ just demands for increased wages/salaries and improved working conditions are being met with hostility rather than compassion. President Irfaan Ali, a man from a poor background, today has the temerity to tell workers, who are demanding better conditions of work, that his regime will not be bullied. How dare him attempt to misrepresent the act of lawful representation as bullyism. He is placing the curse of his regime on the backs of the teachers, those who support them, and the Judge who upholds their right in a court of law to ensure justice is served.

No president respecting the Constitution and Laws of Guyana would dare think, much less utter such a statement to workers who are on the picket line exercising their constitutional rights. 

Rather than acknowledge his government has erred, he now slaps mud in the faces of workers, who are deserving to be treated with respect and dignity.  This nation could vividly recall in 2018, Ali bellowing in the National Assembly with hands flaying, and calling on the A Partnership of National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) government to engage the teachers.

It was he who stated in 2018 that teachers deserve no less than 50 percent pay increase. What has changed his mind today? In 2018 Guyana was a struggling economy, not yet ranked the world’s fastest growing, and not raking in US$2.08 Billion in oil revenue as expected this year.

This is a man before he became a minister who was among the working poor and raised in a working-class home.  He is no stranger to challenges workers face every day to make ends meet. Now today he sits at the pinnacle of Guyana’s wealth, by virtue of his office, enjoying the wealth of the nation at taxpayers’ expense. He is operating as though he is not liable to be held accountable.

The teachers’ struggle enters its fifth week and evidently the regime is displaying behaviours akin to the colonial authorities. The regime does not care nor is it mindful of ensuring a stable industrial environment and the welfare of our children who are experiencing loss because of its intransigence. And the PPP/C doesn’t care because most of the high officials’ children are in private schools benefiting from the two-tiered society it has created for the haves and have-nots.

Ali, who is from the West Coast Demerara, was raised in a sugar community and would have heard stories from his elders how they were mistreated on the plantations. Why in the 21st century, the descendants of indentured servants can be as callous, cruel and uncaring as the sugar barons and estate drivers.

Brazil President Lula dropped a hint to him, during a shared press conference, about the respect and importance of collective bargaining and the corresponding impact on improving workers quality of life. Lula’s message fell on deaf ears.

In the current struggle of the teachers, the struggle of bauxite workers, employed by the Bauxite Company of Guyana Incorporated (BCGI), remains unresolved and a painful reminder of the PPP regime’s transgression of workers’ rights. It is also a reminder of the regime’s willingness to allow international forces to trample our laws and reduce Guyanese to second-class citizens in their birth land.

BCGI workers deserve to have their 19-year-old-grievances resolved through arbitration. Those workers who have been denied their correct termination benefit deserve redress. In 2020 BCGI calculated the workers’ termination benefits on 365 days when these are not working days. This error has financially deprived workers what’s justly theirs, which their union, the Guyana Bauxite & General Workers Union (GB&GWU), has requested of the Ministry of Labour to facilitate the process to correct.

Several letters sent by the GB&GWU to the labour ministry to correct the economic injustice are lying somewhere on Minister Joe Hamilton or Chief Labour Officer Deonarine Persaud’s desk. The ministry refuses to budge even as BCGI remains a legal entity in Guyana and the Government of Guyana has shares in the company.

The issue of the public servants and government’s refusal to respect these workers’ right to collective bargaining and representation through the Guyana Public Service Union is another vexatious and lawless situation.

Consistent with the government’s treatment of workers the nation is called on to rally around our teachers and all workers. If the government gets away with trampling the rights of some workers only  a matter of time before it tramples the rights of all citizens that do not form part of its clique.

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