Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

A new wave of Chi­nese im­mi­gra­tion is sweep­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, trig­ger­ing a ba­by boom and un­earthing a ring of ex­ploita­tion which ap­pear to go un­no­ticed by the au­thor­i­ties.And while the Chi­nese busi­ness­es flour­ish, more re­ports of de­plorable liv­ing con­di­tions con­tin­ue. Apart from re­cent ex­po­sures of hor­ren­dous con­di­tions at con­struc­tion sites, health of­fi­cials have re­port­ed that many of the Chi­nese who work in restau­rants, sleep in­side cup­boards and on top of ta­bles as they have no beds.

With no mon­ey for rent, the poor Chi­nese labour­ers are forced to bunk in of­ten shod­dy fast food out­lets. In light of these ex­po­sures, ques­tions were raised by of­fi­cials of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber at a func­tion last week about how il­le­gal Chi­nese are be­ing brought in­to the coun­try. Who is is­su­ing their work per­mits and who is pro­vid­ing dri­vers li­cens­es to the im­mi­grants?Sources in­di­cate that a lo­cal "Chi­nese con­nec­tion" arranges the busi­ness op­er­a­tions but sev­er­al Chi­nese im­mi­grants said they were told not to speak about the trans­ac­tions.

Once the Chi­nese get here, they im­me­di­ate­ly set up their busi­ness­es, pay­ing as much as $5,000 per month to rent a venue in ur­ban ar­eas. The Chi­nese fast food out­lets are of­ten lo­cat­ed at street cor­ners, spank­ing new build­ings or un­der peo­ple's homes. Some lo­cals are hired but the ma­jor­i­ty of cooks and clean­ers are of Chi­nese de­scent.Checks at 12 restau­rants in south Trinidad re­veal that most of the Chi­nese women who work at the restau­rants opt to have chil­dren in Trinidad as they are not al­lowed to have more than one child in Chi­na.

Un­der Chi­na's one child pol­i­cy, cou­ples are lim­it­ed to hav­ing one child, be­cause of strict fam­i­ly plan­ning re­stric­tions. The pol­i­cy was es­tab­lished by Chi­nese leader Deng Xi­aop­ing in 1979 to lim­it com­mu­nist Chi­na's pop­u­la­tion growth. In some parts of Chi­na, fines, pres­sures to abort a preg­nan­cy, and even forced ster­il­i­sa­tion are im­posed to pro­hib­it sec­ond or sub­se­quent preg­nan­cies.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view, a Chi­nese restau­rant own­er of San Fer­nan­do, who spoke lit­tle Eng­lish, said she bore her three chil­dren in Trinidad. "I sent two back Chi­na. This one will go soon," she said, point­ing to a cherub two-year-old girl. The busi­ness­woman ex­plained that if she had a son in Chi­na, then she could not have an­oth­er child. If she gives birth to a girl, then she has one more chance to try for a son.A Chi­nese trans­la­tor who has reg­u­lar busi­ness trans­ac­tions with the Chi­nese im­mi­grants said they were giv­en strict in­struc­tions not to speak with the me­dia. He ex­plained that many of the Chi­nese who came to Trinidad were bet­ter off than they were in the over-pop­u­lat­ed Chi­na.

Strain on the health sys­tem

But while this is so, health of­fi­cials com­plained that the Chi­nese busi­ness ex­pan­sion is tak­ing a toll on the health in­spec­tion op­er­a­tions.Chief Pub­lic Health of­fi­cer at the San Fer­nan­do Health De­part­ment John Ramkhelawan said the Chi­nese restau­rants gives them a heav­ier work­load. He ex­plained that on­ly 16 of­fi­cers worked in the San Fer­nan­do re­gion, which ex­tends from Mara­bel­la to La Ro­maine.

Ramkhelawan not­ed that apart from this, there were al­so con­straints with re­spect to the lan­guage bar­ri­er. "Some of them are not versed in Eng­lish, so we have prob­lems com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them. When we do food han­dlers lec­tures, they can­not un­der­stand, so we need to ad­dress that de­fi­cien­cy in our lec­ture ma­te­r­i­al to ef­fec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate with them," Ramkhelawan re­vealed.He said for­mer may­or of Ch­agua­nas, Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan last year de­vel­oped a lec­ture in Chi­nese lan­guage to deal with this prob­lem. "When we want to ex­plain to them to do cer­tain works in their busi­ness, we have to give it to them in writ­ing and then they could get it trans­lat­ed and in­ter­pret­ed.

This is a long process," Ramkhelawan said, adding that in­spec­tors are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with many Chi­nese restau­rants."Many of them need to have bet­ter ex­trac­tor fans, fridges and waste dis­pos­al. Be­cause fast food gen­er­ates a lot of oil, we have to reg­u­lar­ly mon­i­tor their dis­pos­al of this," Ramkhelawan said. He added that at least two more Pub­lic Health In­spec­tors must be hired to as­sist with the ad­di­tion­al work­load.

Mean­while, in the Pe­nal dis­trict, Chief Health In­spec­tor She­sat Mo­hammed al­so com­plained that com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems with the Chi­nese were ham­per­ing san­i­ta­tion. He said dur­ing vis­its, they are of­ten ap­palled at the liv­ing con­di­tions."We see ev­i­dence that they sleep in the restau­rants. They do not have al­ter­na­tive homes. On one oc­ca­sion, we pulled a par­tial­ly opened draw­er and found a ba­by sleep­ing," Mo­hammed said.

He ex­plained that the pe­tite Chi­nese labour­ers curl up on shelves in their cup­boards and sleep un­til the next day. "They are hum­ble peo­ple, ac­cus­tomed to hard work but the way they live is def­i­nite­ly cause for con­cern. Hous­ing is sub­stan­dard. Some­times we have about 20 Chi­nese sleep­ing in a two room," Mo­hammed added.And even af­ter the Chi­nese work­ers reg­is­ter for their busi­ness­es, Mo­hammed said it is dif­fi­cult to pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy the faces be­cause their fea­tures are sim­i­lar.

Mo­hammed rec­om­mend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment find so­lu­tions to en­sure bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Chi­nese.Mean­while, Car­li­na Boodram com­plained that in some Chi­nese su­per­mar­kets, cus­tomers are un­able to read la­bels or bills be­cause it is writ­ten in Chi­nese. "The Gov­ern­ment must reg­u­late this be­cause it is il­le­gal for us to buy prod­ucts which are not prop­er­ly la­belled," Boodram said.

Pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions from Chi­nese

De­spite the set­backs, the con­tri­bu­tion of the Chi­nese peo­ple in T&T is un­de­ni­able. Sev­er­al sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives from mer­chan­dis­ing com­pa­nies said they pre­ferred to do busi­ness with the Chi­nese im­mi­grants. One rep­re­sen­ta­tive who asked not to be named said: "The Chi­nese pay in cash. Most busi­ness own­ers want a 30 day cred­it, but they don't wait for this. As soon as they get their goods, they pay cash."

He ex­plained that in south Trinidad alone, more than 12 suc­cess­ful new Chi­nese su­per­mar­kets have sprung up at Gas­par­il­lo, Point Fortin, La Ro­maine, Mara­bel­la, San Fer­nan­do and Debe. Among the new­ly opened Chi­nese su­per­mar­ket chains are Fu­gian, Flour­ish­ing, Rong Yang, Peip­ing and Tang, Lin Zhi, Song Han and Hang Yu su­per­mar­kets. In Debe alone, two new su­per­mar­kets Jinx­iu and Clas­sics opened their doors to the pub­lic last year.

In ad­di­tion to the su­per­mar­kets, Chi­nese restau­rants have been suc­cess­ful­ly es­tab­lished un­der peo­ple's home, in spank­ing new build­ings and pop­u­lar street cor­ners. Be­tween Pe­nal to Dun­can Vil­lage, alone, a to­tal of 11 Chi­nese restau­rants line the SS Erin Road. Along the East West cor­ri­dor, scores of Chi­nese restau­rants could be found of­fer­ing an ar­ray of de­li­cious Chi­nese and Can­tonese dish­es.Usha Bas­deo, who was shop­ping in Jinx­iu, said the Chi­nese su­per­mar­kets have bet­ter prices. "A few of my friends have been say­ing that the prices here are cheap­er than any­where else and I have been check­ing the shelves for the past half hour and its true," Bas­deo said.

She ex­plained that the Chi­nese su­per­mar­kets were well or­gan­ised and al­though the work­ers did not speak much Eng­lish, they were very help­ful.Har­riper­sad Pooran said lo­cals had a lot to learn from the Chi­nese."They have a good work eth­ic and they are very hard work­ing. I be­lieve that our peo­ple can learn a lot from the Chi­nese," Pooran said.On Oc­to­ber 12, 2006, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning gave a one off hol­i­day to cel­e­brate 200 years of Chi­nese ar­rival and con­tri­bu­tions in Trinidad.Man­ning laud­ed the Chi­nese for their in­put in T&T's eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty.