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Saturday, May 17, 2025

At what cost, Chinese labour?

by

20120606

Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod says he is seek­ing to es­tab­lish a for­eign mi­grant pol­i­cy in T&T to en­sure lo­cals are pro­tect­ed. No such pol­i­cy ex­ists right now. Afra Ray­mond, head of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) for the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, ex­pressed con­cern over the re­cent Chi­nese in­vest­ment thrust in­to T&T and the avail­abil­i­ty of Chi­nese labour. Last month, Chi­na Jiang­su In­ter­na­tion­al re­ceived a $500 mil­lion con­tract to build the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Pe­nal/Debe cam­pus.

The JCC had some con­cerns about the process and how the con­tract was award­ed. McLeod, in­ter­viewed last Mon­day at the min­istry's of­fice at the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, said based on his in­for­ma­tion, the award­ing of the con­tract was trans­par­ent, fair and de­cent. McLeod said, "They (Chi­na Jiang­su) won by com­ing in on a price of $300 mil­lion less, I be­lieve, than the lo­cal con­trac­tor. "We need to look at oth­er costs that may not be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. For ex­am­ple, are they go­ing to bring in all the labour and if that is so, then is this the kind of cost we should en­ter­tain?"

Ef­fects of mi­grant labour

He said the Gov­ern­ment has to look at the long-term so­cial im­pact of mi­grant labour in that mon­ey earned in T&T is tak­en out. "The so­cial cost of keep­ing peo­ple in­ac­tive while we en­gage Chi­nese labour must be ex­am­ined," he said. McLeod said the process must be scru­ti­nised. "The gov­ern­ment ac­cepts these for­eign con­tracts with­out look­ing for the es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ent-lo­cal con­tent." He said the min­istry is com­mit­ted to ex­am­in­ing the process to en­sure that lo­cals who are will­ing and able to work and pos­sess the re­quired com­pe­ten­cies are not ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by for­eign labour.

"I would be prepar­ing a po­si­tion pa­per that would be pre­sent­ed to the gov­ern­ment for ap­proval," McLeod said. He said it was im­per­a­tive to have this pol­i­cy. "We must be able to analyse the im­pact mi­grant labour is hav­ing on the lo­cal in­dus­try.

"It is good to see well-con­struct­ed build­ings, but when Chi­nese are labour­ers and are seen push­ing a wheel­bar­row, how has that pos­i­tive­ly af­fect­ed cit­i­zens of this coun­try? "We need to have in­for­ma­tion on how many Chi­nese are be­ing brought here, un­der what con­di­tions, and how many of them en­gage in tasks that na­tion­als could do?"


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