Richard Lord

?Labour Min­is­ter Ren­nie Du­mas says the liv­ing con­di­tions at a com­mune in Cunu­pia in Cen­tral Trinidad for Chi­nese mi­grant em­ploy­ees of Li­u­jing Bei­jing Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny is not an is­sue. House Speak­er Bar­ry Sinanan grant­ed leave to Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to present the mat­ter for de­bate as a def­i­nite mat­ter of ur­gent pub­lic im­por­tance. And Du­mas said the mat­ter cen­tred around three is­sues–the du­ra­tion of the con­tract, the re­ten­tion of earned wages as a bond for per­for­mance and wages re­tained. He said the prob­lems re­lat­ed to on­ly one com­pa­ny em­ploy­ing Chi­nese mi­grant work­ers and not the oth­er 18 com­pa­nies em­ploy­ing Chi­nese work­ers in T&T.

Du­mas in­sist­ed that the labour laws and con­ven­tions were be­ing ad­hered to in this coun­try. He said his min­istry was "quite ca­pa­ble of man­ag­ing the is­sues that arise in labour in T&T." In re­sponse to claims from Dr Mooni­lal that the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion was not at risk be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion, Du­mas said: "I want to as­sure the coun­try that we have noth­ing to be ashamed of." He ac­cused Dr Mooni­lal of ma­lign­ing the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency. Du­mas said the OSH Agency and labour in­spec­tors, in their re­cent vis­its to the con­struc­tion sites of the Chi­nese com­pa­ny, have re­port­ed that there were no dra­mat­ic is­sues.

He said claims be­ing made that the work­ing con­di­tions could be de­scribed as slav­ery were a to­tal false­hood." He said there are peo­ple in this coun­try who are "very dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and racist in our minds." He added that Chi­nese had al­most be­come a bad word in T&T. "We want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that the Gov­ern­ment of T&T does not sub­scribe to that racism (and) that dis­crim­i­na­tion," he said. Mooni­lal de­mand­ed that a tri­par­tite com­mit­tee be set up to mon­i­tor the is­sue of con­tract work and mi­grant work­ers on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. (See Page A5)