By Marvin Cato | HGP Nightly News |
ROSE HALL, GUYANA — Frustration boiled over into industrial action at the Rose Hall Sugar Estate on Tuesday, as disgruntled sugar workers downed tools and took to the picket line over outstanding retroactive payments promised to them by President Irfaan Ali.
According to the protesting cane harvesters, the financial assurances were made directly by the Head of State during high-profile visits in late 2025. Workers note that they were explicitly told they would receive their retroactive and out-of-crop earnings as soon as the harvesting crop concluded. However, despite the current crop wrapping up, the promised allocations have failed to materialize, leaving many families facing severe economic strain.
The workers’ concerns were amplified on the picket line by Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed and We Invest In Nationhood (WIN) Member of Parliament Gobin Harbhajan, both of whom stood with the employees to hear their grievances. Laborers lamented that under current out-of-crop arrangements, they only receive about four days of work per week, which nets roughly $27,000 weekly. Once statutory National Insurance Scheme (NIS) deductions and union dues are subtracted, workers say the remaining take-home pay is vastly inadequate to support their families under Guyana’s rising cost of living.
“The same government come here and promise… now they in power and what they doing?” one striker questioned, noting that workers feel abandoned after the election cycle.
The industrial standoff at Rose Hall mirrors a similar picketing exercise staged simultaneously by cane harvesters at the Blairmont and Albion sugar estates. Earlier in January, workers attached to the Uitvlugt estate had also taken industrial action over outstanding retroactive pay, prompting the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) to admit at the time that the disbursements were delayed simply because funds were unavailable.
Speaking from the protest line, Opposition Leader Mohamed questioned why Guyana’s sugar workers are still being forced to beg for their money when the administration continues to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars into the state-owned enterprise.
“We are here today to address a retroactive that the President himself promised,” Mohamed stated. Shifting his criticism toward Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha, Mohamed argued that the ministry has fundamentally failed to protect the welfare of the sugar workforce in Region 6 (East Berbice-Corentyne).
MP Harbhajan clarified that the parliamentary opposition does not oppose subsidizing the sugar industry, provided the money directly benefits the frontline labor force. He noted that during the recent parliamentary session, the opposition did not block the government’s Supplementary Financial Paper, which granted an extra $3 billion emergency cash injection to GuySuCo—on top of the $13.4 billion already allocated to the corporation in the national budget earlier this year. Harbhajan demanded that Minister Mustapha explain exactly how these multi-billion-dollar injections are being managed if the corporation still claims it lacks the resources to fulfill its wage commitments.
Meanwhile, the government has consistently defended its aggressive investments in the sugar sector. The administration maintains that billions of dollars are being systematically spent to rebuild the industry from its previous collapse, re-employ thousands of workers left jobless by historic estate closures, and modernize field operations through mechanical harvesting. Despite those long-term structural goals, striking workers vow they will not resume duties until their immediate retroactive payments are deposited.
