PPP Executive Gail Teixeira yesterday accused the media of facilitating a racist line of attack over the workers at the Marriott construction site being exclusively non-Guyanese, while saying such projects usually assimilate local workers into their operations.
“For me, you have all fallen prey to the attack on Marriott because, like Amaila, it is a flag ship of the government,” she said at a PPP press conference held at Freedom House, Robb Street yesterday. “First it was corruption… you ain’t find it. Now you got to pick on the workers who are coming in who are foreigners?” she asked rhetorically.
The concession to Chinese contractor Shanghai Construction Group, which is building the facility, for it to use only Chinese workers has generated much public criticism, especially after government’s explanation that is a cost saving measure and that locals lacked skills to efficiently complete the work in a reasonable time. A number of pickets have started outside the construction site at Kingston and the opposition parliamentary parties are preparing to mount a series of measures aimed at seeking a reversal of the position taken by AHI and the government with regard to Guyanese workers.
“What disturbs me about what I have read in the papers…our Constitution talks about ethnicity and nationality and one is not allowed to discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion, class, gender and nationality,” Teixeira, however, said yesterday.
“When foreigners come [to this country] and work and their children go to our schools, we don’t ask to see work permits. We are a signatory and a ratified signatory of the Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families and I suggest that you go and look at that convention which we ratified in 2010,” which speaks to how Guyana should treat its migrant workers, she added.
Teixeira noted that when Barama first started operating in Guyana, the workers were from the Philippines and Malaysia and she pointed out that this was at a time when unemployment was 20 to 30 per cent. “You are behaving like this is the first time. It is not,” she declared.
She further noted that in the case of the National Stadium, the agreement with India to build the facility with funding from EXIM Bank of India saw government agree to foreign nationals carrying out the works. “There were Indian workers who came and worked in Guyana. I was the Minister of Home Affairs at the time. I know about the work permits… I know how many Indian workers came in here and what work was sublimed and subcontracted to Guyanese,” she said.
“The International Conference Centre was again a China-Guyana agreement where Chinese workers were used. I didn’t hear a peep about this in the press. Skeldon Sugar Factory; again, foreign and Chinese workers and I didn’t hear a peep. And lo and behold Marriott takes place and everyone is up-in-arms.But it smells stink because it smells of racism. It smells of anti-nationality. We don’t seem to have that problem with the companies that are coming in that are bringing in non-Chinese. We have Canadian companies here… we have Russian companies here,” she added.
Teixeira said given the amount of work the country has to do to move forward, it required a larger population than “770,000. Our immigration policy is aimed at one: attracting skilled people, whether they are Caribbean or from other parts of the world. If an investor wants to come and put x million dollars down and he says look I have to bring in this number of workers for this period of time… and the agreement [always stipulates] that the number of foreign workers lessen over a period of time,” she explained.
Also addressing the news conference, Attorney General Anil Nandlall noted the number of Guyanese who are working overseas in all parts of the world. “We as a country cannot afford to take that kind of position. [If we do], we do so to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of Guyanese who are living in the Caribbean, in North America and every other part of planet Earth and are being employed by various companies and other entities,” he said.
