“Cash flow problem” delays incentive pay-out at two Berbice sugar estates

Last Updated on Saturday, 10 January 2015, 20:20 by GxMedia

Thousands of sugar industry workers at two East Berbice estates now have to wait until later this month to receive their Holiday-With-Pay incentive because the state-owned Guyana Sugar Corporation (Guysuco) has a cash-flow problem, a senior union official said Saturday.

General Secretary of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU),  Seepaul Narine told Caribbean News Desk that only Rose Hall and Albion Estates have not yet been paid due to a “cash flow problem.”  

“There was no difficulty. They had a cash-flow problem,” he said. Asked whether that meant that Guysuco had no money to pay, he said “I don’t know if that is so but they had a cash flow problem. You can’t say they had no money to pay because the fact is that they are paying…”

Narine said that the union, workers and the company have agreed that all outstanding payments of that incentive would be made on Friday, January 16, 2015 to the 3,000 workers at Albion and 2,500 at Rose Hall.

No  Guysuco official could be reached immediately Saturday for comment.

The union official explained that eligible workers at the other estates were paid the incentive on Friday, January 9. “The other estates (workers) who were due to receive have already received,” he said.

Holiday-with-Pay is calculated based on the completion of 80 percent available work-days. Rough estimates are that about 12 percent of the corporation’s 17,000 workers do not qualify.

Guysuco has in the past had to rely on multi-billion dollar bail-outs to cover operating expenditure and the payment of emoluments.