Front Page Comment

In your hands is the latest edition of COMBAT, the voice of GAWU, the nation’s largest workers organisation which represents thousands in the vital productive sectors of the country’s economy – sugar, rice, sea-food, distillers, the timber industry and others.

The New Year, 2009, has brought its own peculiar challenges – to Guyana and the world community, as a whole. On January, 2009 event of great expectations and hope was the inauguration of a new American President. Barack Obama, a relatively young mixed-race politician assumed the American presidency as the rest of the world dared to believe that, unlike his predecessor George Bush, he would force the Republicans and various sectors of American power to change their way of doing things and manipulating the world. We at COMBAT and GAWU can only hope and wish him success, but with much caution. We know what he has inherited but we know too of his campaign policy positions on a number of international issues. We wait to see if he can exert his tremendous power in the interest of the ordinary people.

These first months also witnessed more rains, more floods, more hardship for our farmers, all reminiscent of the horrors of early 2005. Again we confronted Nature’s worst and survived, but the nation felt the consequences in high prices for agricultural products and even resort to IMPORTING SUGAR for local consumption!

Strategies for national survival were necessary, and, though not always popular, proved reasonably correct. The new Skeldon factory is at last functional. It is a success story and a disappointment to the doomsayers. The brand new Board of Directors and the management personnel must urgently address the multitudinous work to be done to ensure that the new three hundred and fifty (350) tonnes per grinding hour factory receives the annual supply of 1.2 million tonnes of canes to produce 110,000 tonnes of sugar with the support of the workers.

Then came the intensification of the world’s worst multi-faceted global financial meltdown. Fuelled by the historical greedy goings-on in the USA’s corridors of capitalist and financial power, stock-markets plummeted, and fiscal corruption laid bare the fragile markets in American banking, housing, motor manufacturing, employment and all related sectors. In that mix came the uncovering of massive scams of fraud by certain American financiers, traders and investors. Other world economies soon caught the American virus and national and international bailouts were, and are, the order of these troubled days.

Naturally, little Guyana was affected. In this edition we deal with the CLICO fall-out, the President’s assurances, the Skeldon challenge and the 2009 National BUDGET. AND WE WELCOME THE PASSING IN JANUARY OF THE TRADE UNION RECOGNITION (Amendment) Bill 2008 which amended the Trade Union Recognition Act of 1997 providing for the “most representative organization of workers and employees” to be consulted by the Minister of Labour when members are to be appointed to the Trade Union Recogntion Board. Democratization of the labour movement and recognition of legitimate workers’ representative bodies will now move forward.

We at COMBAT and GAWU always identify and discern HOPE. Hope springs eternal! All could never be lost. That is why we continuously pledge to work and collaborate with the Government, our members, their employers and society at large – to ensure Guyana’s survival – and progress.

Read, enjoy this edition.