Joseph Re­my, pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun), is crit­i­cis­ing busi­ness own­ers and the em­ploy­er class for what he sees as the ex­ploita­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grant work­ers.

“We are con­cerned and we are alarmed at what is hap­pen­ing. The pri­vate sec­tor is tak­ing ad­van­tage of those work­ers. These peo­ple have been ex­ploit­ed be­cause they are dis­ad­van­taged and be­cause they are con­sid­ered to be alien to this labour mar­ket they are be­ing used by the busi­ness class. We con­demn that. While they are not T&T na­tion­als, they are work­ers,” he told Guardian Me­dia by phone yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Re­port on Sun­day, one month af­ter the reg­is­tra­tion process for Venezue­lans was com­plet­ed, there have been com­plaints from mi­grants about job scams, sex­u­al ad­vances on job in­ter­views and oth­er is­sues.

Mem­bers of sev­er­al Venezue­lan groups re­lat­ed ex­pe­ri­ences to the Sun­day Guardian as Venezue­lans con­tin­ue set­tling in and await­ing their reg­is­tra­tion cards.

Last Thurs­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said cards be­ing print­ed should be dis­trib­ut­ed in a few weeks. He said reg­is­tra­tion forms had pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion and au­thor­i­ties were now track­ing prob­lems, in­clud­ing traf­fick­ing.

Re­my called on the au­thor­i­ties to “take ac­tion” against em­ploy­ers found ex­ploit­ing mi­grant work­ers.

“The Gov­ern­ment should in­ter­vene and do some­thing about that. Put all those in­di­vid­u­als that are found guilty, throw them over the coals and take ac­tion against them.”

At the pol­i­cy lev­el, he said that the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) had called for a doc­u­ment on mi­grant work­ers.

“JTUM made a state­ment on mi­grant labour. When we did the work­ers’ agen­da, one of the things we clam­oured for and still want is a mi­grant labour pol­i­cy.

“In the ab­sence of that, what has hap­pened now with the Venezue­lans demon­strates that the pol­i­cy would have been ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary. There would have been some con­trol for the abuse we see now. Up to now, we have not had that.”

Ra­jiv Diptee, pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket’s As­so­ci­a­tion, told Guardian Me­dia last Fri­day that em­ploy­ers in that in­dus­try will be pay­ing mi­grants min­i­mum wages and even high­er based on the laws of the coun­try.