Oil companies replacing locals with foreigners for driving and cleaning jobs - GAWU

Oil companies replacing locals with foreigners for driving and cleaning jobs – GAWU

Oct 23, 2021 News

Kaieteur News – The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) recently stated on its website that oil companies and their subcontractors have been replacing locals with foreigners to do driving, cleaning and other simple jobs.

A local worker employed in the oil sector (A GAWU photo)

GAWU highlighted that it made this discovery following dialogue with local workers in the oil sector. The union stated that in trying to justify this act, the oil companies have reasoned that Guyanese lack the qualifications, skill and experience to undertake certain basic tasks.
However, according to GAWU, the tasks some of the companies have hired foreigners to do are not complicated and can be done by Guyanese.
“For instance, we learnt that a well-known foreign company has recruited foreign nationals as drivers, mechanics, and other trades and another firm has employed foreigners to undertake labouring tasks,” stated GAWU.
GAWU pointed out too that foreigners are not only taking away the jobs from Guyanese, but they are receiving better payment and incentives than the locals.
“This is patently discriminatory, and we consider it disrespectful to Guyanese…foreign workers are reportedly benefitting from housing, subsistence and other allowances, while our Guyanese brothers and sisters receive nothing of the sort,” the union stated.
GAWU further revealed that apart from this, it has been told that some of these foreigners being brought to replace locals in the sector, have not even received work permits and are working without paying income taxes to Guyana.
The union is now calling for the government to urgently investigate this matter, even as it is actively addressing the enactment of a local content legislation.
This is not the first time that it has been brought to the attention of the public that the oil companies have been favouring the foreigners more than the locals.
Recently, Kaieteur News had reported that some local workers were sent home by the Guyana Shore Base Inc. (GYSBI), a local company which boasts that 90% of its work force is Guyanese, allegedly because they had complained to the media that foreigners were being paid more than they to do the same job.
In 2019, this newspaper had reported too that an oil service company operating aboard the Liza Destiny Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel, appears to be using the job descriptions for some of its employees to pay foreign workers more than local workers for the same job.
Revealing this was attorney-at-law and current Member of Parliament, Sanjeev Datadin. He had made the disclosure while appearing on Kaieteur’s Radio programme, Guyana’s Oil & You and stated, “You can’t discriminate on how much you pay locals versus how much you pay overseas people for the same job”.