Richard Lord

Labour Min­is­ter Ren­nie Du­mas says the Chi­nese firm Bei­jing Li­u­jing Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny has com­mit­ted no breach of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act (Os­ha).

Du­mas said so in a in­ter­view at his River­side Plaza of­fice, af­ter a meet­ing with the Chi­nese Charge d'Af­faires in Port-of-Spain, He Wei, yes­ter­day to dis­cuss the un­re­solved is­sues af­fect­ing Chi­nese work­ers em­ployed by the com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny is work­ing on two sec­ondary schools, one in Aranguez, the oth­er at Five Rivers. In a re­lease the min­istry stat­ed the OSH Au­thor­i­ty and Agency in­spect­ed the two sites and work­place safe­ty and health were found to be sat­is­fac­to­ry at the Aranguez school, where no work was tak­ing place. At the Five Rivers school the au­thor­i­ty re­port­ed safe­ty and health con­di­tions "were found to be al­so sat­is­fac­to­ry with mi­nor ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties." Dozens of the work­ers staged demon­strat­ed on the Uri­ah High­way near Ch­agua­nas on Tues­day, de­mand­ing to be paid their out­stand­ing monies and be sent home. Du­mas said yes­ter­day two of­fi­cials from his min­istry, the Chief Con­cil­ia­tor and the Chief Labour In­spec­tor, have been asked to meet with of­fi­cials of the com­pa­ny and its work­ers to re­solve the out­stand­ing is­sues.

Du­mas said their re­port, showed that "there were no Os­ha-re­lat­ed prob­lems at the work sites." "The work­ers said they ex­pect­ed to be here for 18 months, the com­pa­ny is sug­gest­ing that the work­ers agreed to be here for a min­i­mum of 18 months," the min­is­ter said. He said with re­spect to the out­stand­ing wages for the work­ers "there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween the wages and a bond which might have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed from the wages earned over the last 18 months." He said the mon­ey was be­ing seen by the work­ers as a gra­tu­ity. Deal­ing with the is­sue of the al­leged in­hu­mane liv­ing con­di­tions for the work­ers, Du­mas said that was not a labour or Os­ha is­sue, it was a health and hu­man is­sue.

"The com­pa­ny as­serts that the em­ploy­ees stopped the clean­ers from com­ing in since this dis­pute start­ed," he added.

Du­mas said the re­port showed that "con­di­tions were not ide­al in terms of wel­fare or hy­giene and sug­ges­tions have been made to the com­pa­ny so that it can ad­dress the is­sues." He said the Min­istry of Health would be asked to send some­one to as­sist the com­pa­ny in rem­e­dy­ing this sit­u­a­tion. Du­mas said there was a group of about 59 work­ers who had com­plet­ed their 18-month con­tracts and want­ed to go home; a fur­ther 70, who have sug­gest­ed that they want to dis­cuss terms and con­di­tions if there were to stay and an ad­di­tion­al 50 work­ers who were will­ing to stay and work. For those wish­ing to re­turn home, Du­mas said the com­pa­ny was pre­pared to fa­cil­i­tate the work­ers, some were de­mand­ing that they must get their bond pay­ment be­fore leav­ing T&T.