By| Antonio Dey | HGP Nightly News|
WALES, GUYANA — Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed made a surprise, high-profile visit to the Wales Gas-to-Energy (GTE) project site on Wednesday, physically confronting what he termed a “travesty” after local contractors and transport workers claimed they had been denied salaries for over two months.
The unexpected site visit shed light on severe labor disputes and mounting financial frustrations plaguing the construction workforce of the multi-billion-dollar state initiative. The project, initially estimated at under US$2 billion, remains largely incomplete despite successive government promises of a timely handover and a corresponding 50 percent slash in national electricity costs.
Speaking directly from the perimeter of the worksite as shifts changed, Mohamed raised alarms over punishing operational hours and the systemic economic abandonment of local service providers.
“As you can see, workers are leaving for the day; they work from 6 a.m. to approximately 5:30 p.m.,” Mohamed stated. He revealed that a large contingent of logistics subcontractors and bus drivers formally intercepted his team to plead for immediate financial intervention. “The bus drivers reached out to me and said that for over two months, they have not received their payments.”
The Opposition Leader heavily criticized the project’s macro-employment structure, presenting stark metrics to allege that qualified Guyanese laborers are being aggressively sidelined in favor of an outsourced, expatriate workforce.
“About 950 are Spanish, while 50 Guyanese are there. Is this putting people first?” Mohamed questioned. “We got your foreigners working here reaping the benefits while Guyanese are left stranded.”
During the intervention, individual transportation contractors were permitted to publicly air their grievances. One bus driver, representing a fleet of more than 50 contracted transport vehicles attached to the site, confirmed that regional management has continuously shifted payment timelines since the end of the first quarter.
“I’ve been working here since March, and approximately two months [and change] have passed, and nobody here… the boss keeps telling us next week, next time, but he’s not paying us,” the contractor lamented.
Another driver, a father of nine children, detailed the extreme domestic hardship caused by the cash-flow stoppage. Drivers at the flagship industrial project typically command a base monthly invoice of $360,000, which consistently increases to $400,000 when accounting for mandatory overtime shifts.
The inspection further unearthed severe operational safety hazards. A separate haulage employee reported a lack of structural maintenance along the transit corridors, which resulted in a recent traffic accident at a sharp turn. The worker claimed that, despite sustaining injuries that required a hospital visit by project supervisors, his compensation for March remains entirely withheld.
“I want you to look into this matter seriously,” another exhausted laborer pleaded on camera. “We are very poor people. We’re working very, very hard to earn money with this project here.”
Mohamed categorized the non-payment of local workers as an outright exploitation of the domestic labor force, pointing out the contradiction of local workers facing poverty while billions of taxpayer dollars are continuously funneled into a project derailed by consecutive administrative delays. Ranks from the political opposition have promised to formally raise the Welsh labor violations within the National Assembly.
