Pe­ter Bal­roop

The fruit of their loins will ben­e­fit vir­ile T&T men who worked in the Cana­di­an sea­son­al farm pro­gramme, dat­ing back to 1988, to the tune of thou­sands of dol­lars in back­pay. In a ma­jor break­through ne­go­ti­at­ed by the T&T Gov­ern­ment, the work­ers who fa­thered chil­dren born dur­ing their stints on the pro­gramme dur­ing the past 20 years, will each get an es­ti­mat­ed $25,000 in cash from the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment.

It does not mat­ter whether the chil­dren were born in T&T, in Cana­da, or an­oth­er oth­er part of the world. Spear­head­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions was T&T's labour con­sul to Cana­da, An­tho­ny Sanchez, who is in charge of this coun­try's af­fairs re­gard­ing the Caribbean Sea­son­al Agri­cul­tur­al Work­ers Pro­gramme in Cana­da.

Sanchez, who re­turned to Cana­da on Thurs­day, af­ter at­tend­ing a week-long Hilton Trinidad sem­i­nar com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the ten Caribbean coun­tries that par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gramme, made the dis­clo­sure to the Sun­day Guardian last week.

T&T has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the agri­cul­tur­al pro­gramme since 1966, with max­i­mum par­tic­i­pants in any year be­ing 1,493. Each par­tic­i­pant has to pay em­ploy­ment in­sur­ance from their earn­ings, and ac­cord­ing to Sanchez, the T&T Gov­ern­ment has, over the years, been seek­ing to have men who work on the pro­gramme get pa­ter­ni­ty ben­e­fits.

Un­der his watch, that ef­fort has fi­nal­ly borne fruit. He said the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment had agreed on a for­mu­la that would see all men who were the fa­thers of chil­dren born while ac­tu­al­ly em­ployed on the pro­gramme over the past 20 years col­lect around $25,000 for each child. Sanchez said the T&T Gov­ern­ment had no records that would ac­cu­rate­ly list all the ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

Min­istry com­pil­ing reg­is­ter

He was count­ing on the Sun­day Guardian re­port to alert men who qual­i­fied to come for­ward and con­tact the Min­istry of Labour, which over­sees the pro­gramme. "We have no idea how many men qual­i­fy...it could be hun­dreds," Sanchez com­ment­ed.

The min­istry, how­ev­er, had de­cid­ed to com­pile a reg­is­ter of qual­i­fiers for for­ward­ing to the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment. The for­mu­la is cal­cu­lat­ed at 70 per cent of earn­ings mul­ti­plied by 35, which rep­re­sents the num­ber of weeks that the in­sured par­ty re­quired to ac­cu­mu­late 600 in­sur­able work­ing hours, he in­di­cat­ed.

Sanchez said over the years, the T&T diplo­mats as­signed to over­see the pro­gramme in On­tario had been locked in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment over the in­sur­ance de­duc­tions from their earn­ings.

He ar­gued that if this coun­try's work­ers could not ben­e­fit from their con­tri­bu­tions, then the de­duc­tions should cease. This year, on­ly about 1,100 Tri­nis, most­ly men, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­gramme.

They worked on farms where to­bac­co, ap­ples, grapes, pears, gar­lic, car­rots, gin­seng or onions are plant­ed. Many of them al­so are as­signed to farms that spe­cialise in flower cul­ture.

Sea­son­al stints ranged be­tween two to eight months a year, and work­ers earn Can$8.75 an hour, which will be raised to $9.50 in 2009, Sanchez dis­closed.

Work­ers are board­ed at the farms to which they are as­signed.

A manda­to­ry de­duc­tion of 19 per cent of earn­ings is re­tained by the T&T Gov­ern­ment as com­pul­so­ry sav­ings, and hand­ed over to the work­ers with­in two months of their re­turn to this coun­try.

Hilton sem­i­nar

The Hilton Trinidad sem­i­nar was at­tend­ed by the Labour Min­is­ters of Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and T&T, as well as se­nior Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS), who all send con­tin­gents an­nu­al­ly to Cana­da to work on the agri­cul­tur­al pro­gramme. It was chaired by Carl Fran­cis, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Labour. The sem­i­nar is held an­nu­al­ly in each of the ter­ri­to­ries, and it be­fell T&T to be host this year.

Sanchez said one of the prob­lems that had emerged in T&T was get­ting peo­ple to vol­un­teer to work in the pro­gramme. This year, T&T se­cured jobs for some 1,100 na­tion­als, many of whom have been mem­bers of the pro­gramme for years. This coun­try has se­cured an en­vi­able rep­u­ta­tion of as­sign­ing hard work­ers to the pro­gramme, so more jobs could be se­cured, Sanchez as­sured.

Va­can­cies that this coun­try are un­able to fill are tak­en up by Mex­i­can and Ja­maican na­tion­als, he dis­closed. On Mon­day last, in­ter­views be­gan at venues through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go for ap­pli­cants who want to work on the pro­gramme. In­ter­views will con­tin­ue un­til Jan­u­ary 9.

Sanchez, who is as­sist­ed by vice con­sul Joan Mo­hammed to run the pro­gramme, work­ing out of of­fices at Vil­lage Cen­tre Court, Mis­sis­sauga, On­tario, said their du­ties in­volved mon­i­tor­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of the work­ers. They get in­volved when po­lice have to be called in­to to deal with T&T work­ers.

Most times that hap­pens when they get in­to fights, or are pulled over for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol. Sanchez said he had no­ticed, over the years, that ab­sence from their homes over ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods gave the work­ers hair-trig­ger tem­pers, and they were quick to get in­to fights.

He added that Mo­hammed and him­self were on call around the clock, as each work­er has their cell­phone num­bers. These num­bers are pub­lished in work­er and em­ploy­er book­lets, out­lin­ing guide­lines for the agri­cul­tur­al pro­gramme.