RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste is urg­ing mi­grants and work­ers to re­port cas­es of work­place ex­ploita­tion, af­ter a reg­is­tered Venezue­lan mi­grant, Suyin Escalona Salazar, al­leged she was dis­missed and de­nied wages fol­low­ing three months of work at a Gulf City restau­rant.

Salazar told Guardian Me­dia she worked at Gua­camole Mex­i­can Grill for three months, earn­ing $21 per hour. She said she in­formed her em­ploy­er via What­sApp that she was ill, but when she re­turned to work a week lat­er, she was fired and told she would not be paid for Jan­u­ary 12-18, to­talling $1,149.17.Salazar said her hands be­came swollen while per­form­ing du­ties, which pre­vent­ed her from work­ing for a week.

Fitzroy Orosco, who as­sist­ed Salazar, ex­pressed con­cern over her treat­ment.

“My friend worked hard at that restau­rant; she cooked, cleaned, took out the garbage, at­tend­ed to the front, cleaned the re­frig­er­a­tor af­ter cook­ing, but she got sick, and her hands were swollen. She was not treat­ed right,” Orosco said.

At­tempts to re­solve the is­sue di­rect­ly with man­age­ment and the busi­ness own­er were un­suc­cess­ful, and they were ad­vised to re­port the mat­ter to the Labour Board.

Salazar is reg­is­tered with the UN­HCR and pos­sess­es le­gal doc­u­men­ta­tion. Orosco added that le­gal ac­tion may be pur­sued if her salary is not paid.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the restau­rant own­er, she ini­tial­ly agreed to a record­ed in­ter­view but lat­er with­drew it, stat­ing that ei­ther her hus­band or an at­tor­ney would re­spond. A man iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as Wayne lat­er said they had been ad­vised by a Min­istry of Labour of­fi­cer that the salary could be with­held. He con­firmed the out­stand­ing wages will be paid, adding that the restau­rant pro­vides free dai­ly meals to work­ers and pays above min­i­mum wage to skilled staff.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Bap­tiste said he would in­ves­ti­gate who gave the in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion to the restau­rant own­er.

“That sounds com­plete­ly ir­ra­tional,” Bap­tiste said, adding that the min­istry does not sup­port ex­ploita­tion.

“If any­one has been ex­ploit­ed, I urge them to con­tact the Min­istry of Labour. We do not sup­port ex­ploita­tion of any kind, whether to­wards cit­i­zens or mi­grant work­ers,” he said.

He stressed that legal­ly em­ployed mi­grant work­ers are en­ti­tled to the same treat­ment as all oth­er work­ers.

“They are adding val­ue to this coun­try and are en­ti­tled to be treat­ed as any oth­er work­er,” he added.

La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group co­or­di­na­tor, Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, said she had hoped re­ports of mi­grant ex­ploita­tion would de­crease fol­low­ing ex­pand­ed reg­is­tra­tion.

“I thought one of the ad­van­tages of this reg­is­tra­tion would be is­su­ing a card that per­mits them to legal­ly live and work here, giv­ing them lever­age to ad­dress ex­ploita­tion,” Ram­nar­ine said.

She al­so not­ed that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty rests with work­ers to un­der­stand their em­ploy­ment con­di­tions.

“I want to send a mes­sage to mi­grants, es­pe­cial­ly those in ir­reg­u­lar work, that they must un­der­stand the terms and con­di­tions of their work. Many don’t even know the names of their com­pa­nies or em­ploy­ers,” she said, com­mend­ing Gov­ern­ment’s mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion ini­tia­tive.