…legal challenge filed
Six months after Government paid out only 50 per cent of severance payment to several categories of sugar workers, the legality of this move is being challenged by the workers’ union – the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers (GAWU) – which is calling on the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) to pay all monies owed to its dismissed employees.
In legal documents seen by Guyana Times International on Wednesday, it was observed that the 4283 workers attached to the Skeldon, Rose Hall and the East Demerara Sugar Estates are calling for their full severance payments.
Earlier this year, sugar workers whose severance packages were G$500,000 or less were paid in full under a supplementary budgetary provision of G$1.931 billion in an effort to provide severance packages to the fired workers. However, workers earning more than that specified amount were paid half of their severance and do date, Government still owes workers the money. This outstanding payment is at the centre of the civil case.
In the legal documents, it was outlined that the redundant workers were to receive their redundancy allowance/severance payment no later than December 29, 2017, which was in keeping with the letter of Section 21 of the Termination of Employment and Severance Pay Act (TESPA). The legal team, which is led by Attorney Anil Nandlall, stated that the over 4000 workers were paid only a portion of their severance payments.
The lawyers highlighted that even while this was ongoing, GuySuCo transferred all of its assets for those three estates under the Finance Minister to the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) as per notice published in the Official Gazette (Extraordinary) of Guyana on December 30, 2017.
Lawyers also observed that GuySuCo has been collateralised as security for a G$30 billion loan that it has or is borrowing from commercial banks. The attorneys are seeking an order from the court to direct the respondents –GuySuCo and NICIL, their officers, servants and agents – to “pay forthwith to the said 4280 employees of GuySuCo – and members of the Applicant, all severance or redundancy payments or allowances due, owing and payable under the provisions of TESPA. They are also seeking costs. The matter comes up for hearing on July 20, 2018, at 13:45h, before Justice Fidella Corbin-Lincoln, at the High Court. Apart from Nandlall, Manoj Narayan, Sasha S Mahadeo-Narayan, Rajendra Jaigobin and Anuradha Deodasingh are all representing the applicants in this case.
It was in January that People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo announced that his party was ready to fund any legal challenge that sugar workers would bring against Government for their full severance. At that time, he pointed out that separate severance payments are “illegal” and called for the Government to follow the law in its entirety.
The issue of 50 per cent severance came in a presidential address to the National Assembly read by Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo at the January 10, 2018, sitting of the National Assembly. The coalition Government closed all, but the Albion, Blairmont and Uitvlugt estates which was not in keeping with a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the industry that recommended no closures. However, Government has long held out that the “re-organising” of the sugar industry was necessary since the billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been expended to aid the ailing sector.
Since the closure of the estates the Government has been heavily criticised for not having a clear direction to steer the terminated workers. In fact, many observers had called for the Administration to conduct social impact studies before such decisions are taken. (Shemuel Fanfair)
