Those Marriott construction project workers

Feb 13, 2013 Editorial

The revelation by this newspaper that all the workers on the Marriott construction project are of Chinese origin raises several issues beyond the not inconsequential one of its effect on local unemployment rates. At this juncture, all of the funds being utilised on the project have been sourced from the national treasury. Whether they are from the NICIL account or Consolidated Fund is immaterial from this perspective.
Why would the government not insist that local workers be hired for at least non-supervisory tasks at this stage of the construction? The Minister of Labour and the President have both confirmed last week that the level of unemployment in the country is high. To their credit, both gentlemen committed the government towards tackling that statistic. Would not the employment of at least 140 Guyanese at the Marriott construction site have assisted in that process?
One cannot say with a straight face, as the CEO of NICIL, Winston Brassington, did, that Guyanese are unfamiliar with modern construction techniques, in light of the government’s own boast of the construction boom in the country. Surely the several ultra-modern multi-storeyed malls going up around Georgetown attest to the presence of the requisite skills. We therefore have to look elsewhere to explain this anomaly.
Purportedly, there is one answer in Brassington’s claim that the Shanghai Construction Group’s winning bid was US$ 65M but they were able to lower the cost to US$51M with the stipulation that Chinese workers were to be used. He averred to the company’s conclusion of the Guyanese workers’ ‘productivity’ not being sufficiently high as to meet the timeline for the hotel’s completion. But for 140 workers to contribute savings of US$14 million on a project that will take a mere 16 months – (Dec 2012 to March 2014) – US$875,000 monthly – demands explanations beyond ‘productivity’ claims.
This works out to asserting that each Guyanese worker would have been paid US$6,250 or G$1,250,000 monthly, more than the Chinese workers presently on site. Since Brassington has assured us that “all of these workers have come by plane and … for the duration of the contract they have to pay Social Security and Income Tax,” the explanation gets even murkier. Even forgetting that the ‘plane tickets’ added to the cost of the Chinese labour, one has to ask, “What are these labourers being paid?”
If Brassington’s claims are to be believed, it cannot be more than the original Chinese who came to Guyana as indentured labourers 160 years ago. About two and a half years ago, there was a report in the very authoritative Guardian newspaper from Britain that China was sending convicts as workers on its overseas projects – especially in Africa. While the Chinese government denied the allegation, the claims being made on the Marriot construction raise anew concerns as to whether the wage scales of the Chinese workers may not constitute a form of ‘dumping’, according to international law. Workers in China, after all, have been witnessing steadily increasing wages.
And in fact, the latter circumstance make Brassington’s claims of the ‘greater productivity’ of Chinese workers fatally suspect. In a 2011 report on Chinese workers in Tanzania, the manager on one project said that “even a lower level worker on our project, such as a tile layer, could earn a monthly salary of around 8,000 yuan (US $1,270).” They also received monthly “hardship” allowances that catapult their salaries far beyond anything Guyanese workers earn.
What is undisputed is that there are more than 4 million Chinese working overseas, among which, data from their Ministry of Commerce showed, a total of 812,000 workers were employed by Chinese companies working abroad as of the end of 2011. As a direct result of its policy on exporting its labour, last year, China received US$66billion in remittances. All of this is very well and good for China, but Mr Brassington and others in the government, including the President and Minister of Labour must ask, “What is in it for us, when we spend our own money?”
With local labourers, that money would have stayed at home to circulate.

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Those Marriott construction project workers

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