Lincoln Lewis fails in his attempt to rewrite history

Dear Editor,

Being myself on old employee of our bauxite industry, having 25 years of service, spanning from 1967 to 1992; and having been Minister responsible for Mines and Minerals (including our bauxite sector) from 1992 to 2011, I am (as someone who knows) obliged to respond to the allegations being made by Mr. Lincoln Lewis in his recent letter in Kaieteur News of Monday, February 13, 2023 under the title “Under Jagdeo’s Presidency the bauxite industry self-contributing Pension Fund worth more than $2.5 Billion was destroyed”. As he says, this was “the single largest pool of money owned by African workers”.

The Bauxite Industry contributing Pension Fund was not destroyed, but distributed to its members. President Jagdeo saved it from destruction by refusing to hand it over to Mr. Lincoln Lewis, as Head of the Union, and his associates.

Our PPP/C Government’s position was that we had a legal and moral responsibility to hand the full benefit (employer and em- ployee contribution, as provided for in the pension fund rules) to every member of the pension fund. We said to Mr. Lewis and his colleagues, “We can give each worker his cheque at one table, and you can have a table nearby so that each worker could deposit it into your Fund, as he or she may choose”. It was for you, Mr. Lewis, to so persuade and commit to the workers.

Yes, “all bauxite workers, at a certain time, both at Linden and Berbice, were terminated (some twice)” but no worker at that time went on the breadline. Those workers ended one day working for the Government-owned company, receiving their termination of employment and all benefits; and the very next day went back to work for the new private bauxite company.

Mr. Lewis is remembering only those parts of various stories which paint his false picture of former President Jagdeo and the PPP/C as he advances his false charges that we have been bent on discriminating against and affronting the dignity of our fellow black Afro-Guyanese citizens. We were not without blemish, but we worked for the eq- uitable development of all our people.

Yes, there were lots of job losses in the bauxite sector: the first, the biggest and most traumatic, was in 1983. For a full story, allow me to recall the history. Like Lincoln, I put a lot of my early working life into the bauxite industry. I was devastated at many levels by the obvious steady decline after 1975 – even though I knew about the new, more advantageous bauxite deposits that were developed in Jamaica, Guinea and Australia; and I knew that nothing is forever; everything goes through the life cycle of being born/started, maturing, glory days, peaking, declining and disappearing. This is particularly so with “wasting resources” – minerals and oil and gas resources which do not “grow back” in our lifetime. The challenge is to use the benefits derived to soundly build new places in the future.

By the early 1980s, many authorities were calling for a great downsizing and transforming of our bauxite sector, and wondering whether it could be profitable again. President Burnham, in 1982, looking to a return of the World Bank/IMF, gave a go ahead for shrinking, which saw the drawing up of retrenchment lists to reduce employment by one-third at every level. He back-tracked in 1982, but the retrenchment went ahead in 1983. About 1800 employees were retrenched then, receiving their full retrenchment and all other benefits.

Declining fortunes continued in the bauxite sector, requiring regularly that millions of dollars of subsistence support be received from our Treasury. In addition, there were two multilateral interventions – 1985 and 1990 – and “voluntary” retrenchment (without replacement) was extended.

Mr. Lewis should see the “beleaguered GuySuCo” as being these days in much the same position as the bauxite sector was in through the 1970s and 80s — receiving proportionately similar billions of dollars of tax-payers money, and finding similarly that the new and different approaches recommended by engineers and consultants have not been rewarded.

Our experience in the way our bauxite sector has evolved can provide us with valuable insights on how our sugar sector might yet evolve.

When we, the PPP/C, entered Office in October 1992, we met in place an agreement entered into between the outgoing PNC administration and the multilaterals and bilaterals, which saw a foreign manager, MINPROC of Australia, installed since 1990. MINPROC was to pronounce, by the end of 1994, whether or not they saw the sector being able to be restored to profitability. If profitable, the company was to be divested; if not, it was to be shut down forthwith. After more than a dozen years, more good money from taxes was not to be thrown to the bauxite sector to keep it going.

When, in 1994, MINPROC announced that it saw no way that bauxite could be returned to profitability, we PPP/C, according to the PNC-entered covenant, were supposed to shut down the sector forthwith. But we did no such thing: we violated that covenant. We argued with the World Bank/ IMF other multilaterals and bilaterals and found a number of creative ways, off and on budget, to keep the sector going while we continued shrinking by retirement and “voluntary retrenchment” and “unbundling.”

We hoped for eventual privatisation of the bauxite cores, as eventually happened, and that some unbundled departments would become privatised businesses on their own.

We were conscious that the days of the old paternalistic company town and socialist state of state-owned enterprises were at an end, but they left in the minds of our peo- ple of the bauxite communities a mindset which would be a great drag. Accordingly, we embarked on changing the mindset from “company employees in a company town” to that of “self-responsible, enterprising entrepreneurs in an open town.”

Then President Jadgeo announced special incentives to encourage business ventures in the bauxite communities, whether initiated by persons from within the communities, from elsewhere in Guyana, or from “foreign.”

Mr. Lewis charges again that the Jagdeo regime did not acknowledge an offer from the Union in partnership with a foreign investor to purchase Bermine. That offer was considered and found, though desirable, to be not credible; and further, many workers did not support it.

Mr. Lewis’s reference to the troubles at BCGI in 2009 points to an area for his reconsideration, and perhaps for all of us. Our righteous anger in the 1950s and 60s, our indignation about slavery and indentureship and the historical European colonial exploitation by imperialist capitalists, put us at war with the developed countries and their trans-national corporations. In DEMBA in the late 1960s, in the run up to nationalisation, much crude, unruly worker behaviour was defended, even instigated, which otherwise would not have been acceptable. No wonder that, after nationalisation, workers were in some confusion, and there was much talk about “functional superiority.”

Industrial relations after nationalisation in 1971 were the worst they had ever been.

I was Minister for the bauxite sector in 2009 when certain incidents occurred at Aroiama, and it was clear that Mr. Lewis was leading, rather misleading, himself and those workers following him along the 1960s pre-nationalisation of DEMBA playbook. But we are no longer at war with the Developed World. These days, we aim to be “Workers for the World” and “Partners with the World.”

The attacks on President Jagdeo must be particularly hurtful, since, as a young economist, Mr. Jagdeo led a study of the Linden community with other then young economists of Linden, including then young De Clou and young (woman) Cole. He has known of, and has been concerned about, the challenges of the bauxite communities second to no other. Thus it was that, from budget time to budget time, he would put to the table that our subsidy of electricity in Linden (to the extent of G$3 billion, 90% of the costs) was an important vehicle for putting money into Linden and the other bauxite communities. The problem was that it was greatly inefficient, wasteful to the extent of 50% and more when compared with the electricity consumption of a similar cohort of customers on our electricity grid on the coast.

The responsible thing to do was to seek more efficient and effective ways of injecting that money into the bauxite communities.

And, sensitive to the dignity of our fellow citizens in Linden, we talked little about this subsidy, a very large allocation at that time, until we were braced with charges like those from Mr. Lewis: that we were not doing anything for the people of Linden and the bauxite communities.

Again, please allow me to recall that when the Cambior/OGML group to which the Linden bauxite core was initially privatised, after an initial period of success, found themselves with little sales and announced that they had to shut down the operations for a month or two, President Jagdeo, without a moment’s hesitation, announced that his Government would provide basic, 40 hrs./