The Corpse in the Dossier

THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ Independent Accountability Journalism The Corpse in the Dossier           

Guyana prepares to defend its record on forced labor in Washington. One dead man in Region Seven makes that defense incoherent.

On July 7,2026, a representative of the Government of     Guyana will appear before the United States Trade Representative’s Section 301 Committee in Washington, D.C., and argue that this country takes forced labor seriously. The Ministry of Labor and Manpower Planning has confirmed  its intention to appear at the public hearing, where it will present what Foreign Secretary Robert Persaud describes as evidence of Guyana’s efforts to ‘prevent and prohibit all aspects of forced labor.‘ The stakes are not trivial: the USTR has proposed a 12.5 percent additional tariff on Guyanese exports — a penalty applicable to new categories of trade beyond the petroleum and bauxite carve-outs currently in effect, with agricultural exports particularly exposed.

This editorial does not dispute Guyana’s right to defend itself before an international forum. What it disputes, with documented precision, is the premise on which that defense will rest. Because somewhere between the ministry’s press releases and the Washington hearing room lies an inconvenient fact that no government spokesperson has adequately addressed: Sekhar Chhetri is dead.

The Batavia Record

Chhetri, an Indian national recruited to operate heavy equipment at the EKAA HRIM Earth Resources Management quarry in Batavia Village, Region Seven, died on May 12, 2026.

The workers’ passports had been confiscated by the company upon arrival. Under both Guyanese law and the international indicators framework developed by the International Labour Organisation, passport confiscation is not a minor administrative irregularity. It is a primary indicator of forced labour. The Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act provides imprisonment of up to five years for any employer who knowingly confiscates a worker’s travel documents. The Ministry of Labour confirmed the confiscation had occurred. No prosecution under that statute has been announced.

The workers described being denied clean drinking water and adequate food — a particular hardship for the Hindu vegetarians among them. One worker was repatriated after losing four fingers in an unguarded industrial accident. A second worker, Chhetri, died at the site.

The Ministry confirmed it was aware of the death and that it would ‘form part of the ongoing investigation.’ Calls were made for an independent autopsy. The question of whether Chhetri’s remains were exhumed before being returned to his family in India — as opposition voices demanded — has received no public answer from the state.

The Managed Resolution

What happened next follows a pattern that accountability journalists in this country have documented across multiple sectors: the crisis was managed, not resolved. Minister of Labour Keoma Griffith, to his credit, moved with visible urgency once the story became public — meeting with the Acting Indian High Commissioner, issuing an ultimatum, and personally demanding the return of the passports. He is to be commended for taking those steps. But the minister simultaneously declined, repeatedly and on the record, to characterise passport confiscation as trafficking.

‘I’m not going to make an allegation of human trafficking without a demand,’ he stated — an explanation that conflicted the legal standard with the evidentiary record, since the demand element of the trafficking statute concerns the trafficker’s demand for services or payment, not a demand by a minister.

EKAA HRIM held a press conference at which its representative, Carl Methuvel, projected corporate ledgers and catering logs onto a screen and declared the allegations ‘malicious fabrications.’ The company claimed it had imported a specialised chef from India to accommodate vegetarian dietary requirements. This theatre of compliance was rewarded. On May 25, the company announced that outstanding wages for April and May 2026 had been settled. The Ministry was formally notified. The file, for practical purposes, began closing.

By June 10, 33 of the 37 surviving workers had been repatriated — 28 of them at the expense not of the state or the company but of Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed, who had first brought the matter to public attention. Five left on EKAA HRIM’s account. Four remained in Guyana having found alternative employment.

The Ministry claimed that 15 workers had expressed a desire to stay; Mohamed publicly called that claim a lie. No criminal charges have been laid against EKAA HRIM or its principals under the Trafficking in Persons Act, the Labour Act, or the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The quarry, which represents a USD 10 million investment, continued operating.

The Presidential Photograph

EKAA HRIM Earth Resources Management is not a fly-by-night operation that slipped through regulatory cracks. Its quarry commissioning ceremony in September 2023 was attended by President Dr. Irfaan Ali. The Ministry of Natural Resources shared photographs of the occasion on social media.” The company’s founder, Saju Bhaskar — the Coimbatore-based head of Texila American University — served as secretary of the India-Guyana Chamber of Commerce, co-inaugurated in July 2023 by President Ali and Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar”.

This is not obscure corporate history. It is the documented context for a question the government has not answered: if the President was present to bless this investment, why did two years pass — years during which complaints were filed through India’s CPGRAMS and MADAD consular grievance portals — without a single regulatory inspection of the conditions in which the workforce lived?

The MADAD portal record is particularly damaging. Complaints from workers at the Batavia site date to 2024 at minimum. One former crusher manager, Manikkam, documented that he was denied medical treatment, had five contract copies forcibly taken from him, had USD 3,000 illegally deducted from his salary over his first six months, and was forced under duress to sign a resignation letter at the company’s Georgetown office.

He spent GYD 300,000 of his own money at the Georgetown Public Hospital for illnesses contracted at the site. The Indian High Commission’s recorded response to RTI filings, as documented by Kaieteur News, was to advise workers to take matters up with the embassy — the same embassy doing the advising. The grievance infrastructure was not deficient; it was present and functioning, and the complaints were being systematically closed.

The Washington Argument and Its Internal Contradiction

Against this backdrop, Guyana now proposes to tell the USTR that it is committed to preventing and prohibiting all aspects of forced labor. The 592 Guardian does not suggest this commitment is insincere at the level of ministerial rhetoric.

We do argue that rhetoric is not a policy record, and that Washington is being invited to evaluate a policy record.

 The USTR’s Section 301 framework does not require Guyana to be a perfect enforcer. It requires Guyana to demonstrate that it imposes and effectively enforces a prohibition on forced-labour imports. The distinction between the 12.5 percent tier — where Guyana currently sits — and the 10 percent tier is precisely the difference between having no effective prohibition and having one that is imperfectly enforced. The government’s Washington appearance could, in principle, argue for movement to the lower tier by demonstrating recent enforcement action.

But enforcement action requires charges, convictions, or at minimum prosecutorial referrals. There are none.

What Accountability Requires

This editorial calls for three things before Guyana’s representative boards a flight to Washington.

First, the Ministry of Labor must publish the findings of the forensic investigation into the death of Sekhar Chhetri. The public was told this death would form part of the investigation. Weeks have passed. The worker’s body has been returned to his family in India. If the state cannot account for how a man died under its regulatory jurisdiction, it has no business representing its enforcement record to a foreign government.

Second, the Guyana Police Force and the Director of Public Prosecutions must publicly state whether they have reviewed the EKAA HRIM matter for criminal referral under the Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act. The confiscation of passports was confirmed by the minister himself. That act is statutory. The absence of any prosecutorial comment is not neutrality — it is a policy decision, and it should be made explicit.

Third, the government must answer the question that the Presidential photograph poses directly: what mechanism, if any, exists to monitor the labour conditions of foreign workers in remote concession operations after a head of state has associated himself with an investment’s commissioning? If the answer is that no such mechanism exists, that is not a regulatory gap — it is a structural failure that the USTR finding has now made internationally visible.

Guyana deserves to avoid an economically damaging tariff. Its agricultural sector, its rice producers, its emerging non-oil exporters deserve a fair hearing.

But a hearing built on a record that elides a dead worker, suspended prosecutions, and a two-year failure of oversight is not a defense of labor standards. It is a performance of them. Washington will notice the difference, even if Georgetown prefers not to.

— The Editorial Board, The 592 Guardian