Labour Minister Dr Nanda Gopaul yesterday defended the use of non-national Chinese labour for the Marriott Hotel construction, saying that at this stage the contractor is using highly technical and advanced construction methods and it will be some time before the Guyanese workers acquire the competencies to use that technology.
“I would like to see a mixture of Guyanese and Chinese workers,” said Gopaul, who also disclosed that local workers will be properly employed at the site before the end of the construction phase.
Gopaul, who made his first visit to the site yesterday shortly after he spoke with Stabroek News, was unsure when the construction is due to be completed.
His statement came even as the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) called for a review of the contract while the AFC declared that the government’s actions reflect a crisis in the economic direction of the country.
Gopaul yesterday noted the technology used by the Chinese contractor, which, for example, eliminates the need for the use of spirit levels.
He said that with Guyanese workers employed with the subcontractors visiting the site on an almost daily basis, there would be some measure of technology transfer. “Whenever the site [requires concrete] Guyanese workers are there when it is being poured,” he said, calling it a learning process and adding that the site supervisor with whom he spoke yesterday was high in praise for the work of the subcontractors and their Guyanese workers.
The minister said that the Labour Ministry had made no visits prior to his impromptu visit yesterday but explained that the work site had been on the ministry’s radar given all of the public pronouncements on it.
According to him, the ministry would have been making unannounced visits not only to certify whether the contractor Shanghai Construction Group was complying with Guyana’s labour laws as stipulated in the contract, but also to certify that all aspects of workplace safety and health are complied with. He said that he had provided translated copies of Guyana’s labour laws to the contractor.
But prior to his site visit, Gopaul had said that a visit by staff of the Ministry of Labour was not on the agenda for the immediate future. “We will visit but I don’t know when,” he had said.
‘Lazy and
undeserving’
Meanwhile, GTUC yesterday called for the contract for the project to be reviewed, while accusing the government of showing contempt to the constitutional right of citizens to work.
“The contract signed on behalf of the people of Guyana must therefore be reviewed and it is important that the people, who are burdened with its funding, understand everything that is ensconced in it,” the GTUC said in a statement.
It also noted the comments of CEO of Atlantic Hotels Inc Winston Brassington, who last week outlined reasons for the use of Chinese labour, and it said his explanations were shameless and an outrage. Brassington last week said that the concession to the contractor to hire Chinese labour was in an effort to save cost, to overcome the language barrier and to have more efficient work carried out.
“These pointers lay bare the contempt the Government of Guyana has for the citizens and the Constitution, notably Article 22, which guarantees the right and duty to work. The GTUC rejects the government’s reasoning on the grounds that: 1) Guyana’s official language is English and any contract entered into should have had the criteria of language compatibility to cater for the Guyanese workforce,” the union umbrella body said.
“This Government is actually telling Guyanese they are lazy and undeserving of work even when their monies are being spent. The claim that the required skills are non-existent is misplaced and dishonest,” it added. “What skills are the government talking about when Guyanese are the ones that built the infrastructure of this land? It was Guyanese labour that built the St. George’s Cathedral, the world’s tallest wooden building; built the Umana Yana; Hand-in-Hand; Guyana Pegasus; the Demerara Harbour Bridge, which for many years held the enviable position as the world’s longest floating bridge. It was Guyanese labour that cut through the forest and built the Linden/Soesdyke Highway; MMA irrigation and conservancy dam; the sea defences; the sugar industry; all of which were considered phenomenal feats at the time of their construction,” the GTUC emphasised.
It said that any caring government’s overriding concern would be about ensuring the people are engaged in productive activity and provided the requisite skills for them to compete. “This government has failed and lost the moral authority to govern because the people who elected them or expect them to fulfil their responsibility for economic growth and jobs are now being told that they are incapable of working in their own country,” the GTUC further stated.
“When a government is taking taxpayers money to fund a project and at the same deny the taxpayers the right to be involved and benefit directly from their hard earned money, such action constitutes re-colonisation”, it added.
The GTUC also suggested that the Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar administrations have sold the citizens’ birthright, while noting that it was convinced, based on past actions, that the administrations of Forbes Burnham, Desmond Hoyte, Cheddi Jagan and Janet Jagan would have never done the same.
‘Retrograde step’
Meanwhile, opposition party AFC warned that the situation will lead to projects funded by taxpayers not being open to local persons. “What [government] has done is that 40 years after independence they have taken us back into the retrograde colonialism without the foreign masters,” said Chairman of the AFC Nigel Hughes told a news conference.
“We believe that there is a major crisis not only of policy but in the economic direction of the country that has been demonstrated by government’s approach to the Marriott. The consequences of that approach are likely to take us back into colonialism,” he said. “We hold no hope that Guyanese are going to be employed at a significant level in the Marriott, since most of the persons from supervisor up need to have some training in the tourism and hospitality industry and there is no such institution in Guyana.”
Hughes said that in the Marriott transaction, the business class or capitalist class, who are normally disposed to investing their capital where they think the risk is worth it, normally take that risk on their own and that risk is usually informed by data. “In the present circumstances, what has happened is that the investor class has benefitted from upfront capital from the state and the business venture has been insulated from risk,” Hughes said.
“Not only has government entered into a transaction which has precluded Guyanese from being involved on the basis – as they say – of lack of qualification but what compounds this situation is that they have not highlighted any steps that will be taken to put Guyanese in a position in which they would qualify for posts at any level of this sort of investment,” he charged.
Hughes said the AFC does not believe that the Marriott was driven by data or that the market forces necessitated the establishment of the Marriott. “Our preferred position and recommendation is that there first needs to be data to drive the addition of rooms. We don’t believe that the arrivals and the profiles of passengers suggest that there is a demand for that additional number of rooms,” said Hughes. “I am unaware of any [other place] in the world where you build a hotel and hope that people will come,” he added.
