Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Hud­dled around a bare wood­en din­ing ta­ble, a group of Chi­nese con­struc­tion work­ers em­ployed with Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Ltd hur­ried­ly swal­lowed a meal of fried rice and char siu pork. Near­by, their co-work­ers beck­oned for them to re­turn to work quick­ly as they toiled te­dious­ly at the Per­form­ing Arts Acad­e­my in Port-of-Spain. The build­ing is due to be hand­ed over to the Gov­ern­ment on No­vem­ber 9, in time for a gala cul­tur­al event that is due to take place at the start of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing next month. Emp­ty food trays, stacks of flour, rice, noo­dles, an as­sort­ment of tea and gas tanks lined the cor­ri­dor of the kitchen at their quar­ters on Fred­er­ick Street, which is lo­cat­ed a stone's throw away from the site of the Per­form­ing Arts Acad­e­my.

Cloth­ing flut­tered in the wind as work­ers ducked un­der the lines to get to and from their rooms. Sit­u­at­ed on the top floor of the quar­ters are small rooms ac­com­mo­dat­ing four men on two makeshift dou­ble-deck­er beds. They have been man­ag­ing with­out lux­u­ries like tele­vi­sion and ra­dio. Clothes were thrown on a line drawn from one end of the room to an­oth­er. Box­es and bags were strewn across one room. Crammed along the cor­ri­dor was one small bath­room and toi­let which is main­tained by the work­ers. The fa­cil­i­ty is one of many that is used by the 200 work­ers.

Protest­ing Chi­nese work­ers

The set­tings and sur­round­ings at the Fred­er­ick Street com­pound of Shang­hai Con­struc­tion were com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to what the me­dia re­port­ed with re­gard to the in­hu­mane con­di­tions that Chi­nese work­ers in Cunu­pia al­leged they were forced to live in by their em­ploy­er Bei­jing Li­u­jing Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd. Bei­jing Li­u­jing Con­struc­tion grabbed na­tion­al at­ten­tion on Tues­day when a group of work­ers were seen protest­ing along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

Sev­er­al me­dia hous­es re­port­ed that the work­ers were fac­ing in­hu­mane con­di­tions. Yes­ter­day, broad smiles cov­ered the faces of the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion work­ers when Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed. "Noth­ing wrong. We are hap­py...we are hap­py," re­marked two Chi­nese work­ers, one of them Chun Yun, 19, who spoke on be­half of the group. Though faced with a lan­guage bar­ri­er, the men said they were quite sat­is­fied with their liv­ing con­di­tions.

Work­ers treat­ed fair­ly

To sub­stan­ti­ate their claims, they will­ing­ly toured the com­pound with a Guardian team and even took the jour­nal­ists to Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Ltd man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Michael Qing Zhang. Zhang said that his com­pa­ny was not tak­ing ad­van­tage of work­ers. He ad­mit­ted that while liv­ing con­di­tions were not the best, his work­ers were com­fort­able and quite hap­py. "While we face some chal­lenges I do not have a ho­tel. I am not say­ing there is no need for im­prove­ment but I treat my work­ers fair­ly. If they have to ac­cept a bit of a low­er stan­dard of liv­ing to ben­e­fit their lives, I think it is all for a good sac­ri­fice." Zhang stayed cleared of com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion that sparked the protest, on­ly say­ing: "There must be fair­ness on both sides.

If you work hard you must be paid. No one will ever hear that my work­ers are protest­ing for wages be­cause Shang­hai Con­struc­tion was ranked in the top 50 by En­gi­neer­ing News as one of the largest com­pa­nies and we in­tend to stay at the top." Stat­ing that a lot was in­vest­ed in bring­ing the work­ers to T&T, Zhang said that all work­ers should be treat­ed eq­ui­tably. He said it costs ap­prox­i­mate­ly $26,000 to bring each work­er here: "This does not in­clude wages, ac­com­mo­da­tion and meals. I give my work­ers three square meals every day some­times four when they work over­time. What I do not do is give them a va­ri­ety of foods to choose from." Some of the foods he said they en­joy in­clude chick­en, pork, fish and veg­e­tar­i­an dish­es. Zhang said af­ter the Per­form­ing Arts Acad­e­my is hand­ed over to the Gov­ern­ment they still have a lot more work to do.