Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

It was "a to­tal false­hood" to sug­gest that the work­ing con­di­tions of the group of protest­ing Chi­nese im­mi­grant/labour­ers in T&T& were "dan­ger­ous, dele­te­ri­ous and such that you can as­so­ciate it with the dra­mat­ic words of slav­ery," Labour Min­is­ter Ren­nie Du­mas has said.

He said he met with of­fi­cials at the Chi­nese Em­bassy, the Chi­nese im­mi­grant/labour­ers and their em­ploy­ers at the Bei­jing Li­u­jian Con­struc­tion Co Ltd as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion be­fore be­ing as­sured that T&T, its Gov­ern­ment and the sys­tems in which they op­er­at­ed met the best stan­dards. He said of­fi­cials from the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Ad­min­is­tra­tion and labour in­spec­tors vis­it­ed two work sites of the Bei­jing Li­u­jian Con­struc­tion Co Ltd and, in both in­stances, the re­ports were "clear that there are no dra­mat­ic is­sues." "I want to as­sure you that we have noth­ing to be ashamed of," Du­mas said. He added: "I want to sug­gest that the rea­sons giv­en for the protest in­clud­ed ba­si­cal­ly three is­sues: The du­ra­tion of the con­tract, that we has­ten to add is a craft­ed mat­ter be­tween those work­ers and the com­pa­ny that em­ployed them; sec­ond, the re­ten­tion of earned wages as a bond for per­for­mance; and, third, the is­sue of wages re­tained."\

Du­mas added that there were 19 com­pa­nies "em­ploy­ing work­ers in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try that can be con­sid­ered na­tion­als of the Re­pub­lic of Chi­na" and that "in none of these have we had sim­i­lar protest." He was re­spond­ing to a mat­ter of ur­gent pub­lic im­por­tance de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day night to ad­dress the work­ing and liv­ing con­di­tions of a group of Chi­nese im­mi­grant/labour­ers, who were ar­rest­ed fol­low­ing protests for the re­turn of what they de­scribed as their "blood mon­ey" or a two-month re­ten­tion fee that was for­feit­ed.