Abdulah: Govt fell asleep on migrant workers

WITH the country experiencing a continuing influx of immigrants from Venezuela and other CARICOM countries seeking employment, MSJ political leader David Abdulah said successive governments have been caught napping regarding the implementation of policies regarding migrant labour.

Addressing a media conference at the party’s St Joseph Road, San Fernando headquarters yesterday, Abdulah said the PNM administration should have been better prepared to deal with migrant workers as they had placed the issue in its 2015 manifesto.

“The government was certainly asleep on this question of migrant labour and it should have been a matter on the radar. This was put in the PNM manifesto in 2015 and it was also in the PP manifesto in 2010.

The PNM manifesto stated that it was formulating and implementing a policy on migrant labour, three years have now elapsed since the government came into existence and there is no formulation on a policy on migrant labour far less for implementing it.

We have seen in the last several years the increase, very significantly in the number of migrant workers entering TT and so we are going to see perhaps a knee-jerk response to this development and hurried consultations will take place around a policy for migrant workers.”

He also knocked the issue of contract labour as many upstream energy sector companies had adopted a “labour supply only contract” saying this was one step away from slavery and indenture ship.

“The principal company takes on board contractors who supply labour and these workers are then placed on off shore rigs and platforms and all of the equipment, all of the tools are provided by the principal company.