Jagdeo, Norton trade words over recruitment of Bangladeshi health workers

Mar 29, 2024 News

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– Govt. says foreign workers being paid the same as locals

Kaieteur News – Allegations that the government is paying foreign workers far more than the local public sector were dismissed by the Peoples Progressive Party’s (PPP) General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo, who holds the vice presidency portfolio within the current administration.

During a press conference on Thursday, Jagdeo clarified that the salaries for foreign workers are on par with Guyanese public workers – contrary to insinuations put forth by the APNU+AFC opposition. “Anyone who is recruited from abroad to work in the public sector … the conditions of service will be no better than what the Guyanese get,” Dr Jagdeo said as he engaged reporters at Freedom House, Georgetown.

He said these claims are merely falsehoods and are nothing but an attempt to mislead the public and create havoc among public sector employees. “They [opposition] try to say that we’re paying them more than what our people will get and that’s patently false. It’s fake again. It’s conjecture by the opposition. They don’t even know the contract,” Jagdeo said.

Currently, the PPP/C government is expanding the healthcare and other sectors, creating a need for additional skilled personnel. To address the shortage of healthcare workers, the government has decided to import nurses from Bangladesh and Cuba. Dr Jagdeo justified this decision by pointing out that 12 state-of-the-art hospitals are currently being constructed in several regions of Guyana and there is a need for a skilled labour force to meet the demand. “We can’t just build the hospital and leave them there without staff,” the general secretary stressed. Dr Jagdeo also exposed the opposition’s hypocritical interest in public service, pointing out that during their administration, thousands of workers were unemployed and tax-burdened. “This fake love for public servants and for people in the public sector…It’s crocodile tears and APNU is really good at that,” he underlined.

Dr. Jagdeo reminded that the government has always prioritised the welfare of Guyanese citizens including the public sector, highlighting that the wages and salaries of this specific group have improved under the PPP/C Administration. “They want to generate dissatisfaction in the public service. Now if you look at the track record of the People’s Progressive Party, in government, you would see that we took public servants who were pauperized under the PNC, in the early period…you can see the evolution of wages and salaries and, and conditions of service in the public sector made the greatest progress in the years when the PPP was in office,” he posited.

Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition, Aubrey Norton told a news conference on Thursday that the government’s approval for the recruitment of 500 Bagladeshi health workers clearly testifies to its continued reluctance to provide the necessary wages and salaries and working conditions to retain our local healthcare workers.  “It is evident that the government intends to ensure that Guyanese healthcare workers, teachers and all public servants continue to live in poverty. This is so because while the government says that the Guyanese workers should wait until 2027 for them to have a livable income, the government is seeking to give foreign workers a better salary, and concomitantly, a better way of life than Guyanese,” Norton said.

He said it is in this context that Guyanese should note the following “(1) the salaries and benefits being offered the foreign workers are substantially higher than for equivalent Guyanese workers in the health care system. This is a slap in the face of our hardworking Guyanese by the PPP government. 2) The use of work contracts to recruit public servants from other countries is a devious stratagem by the PPP to suppress wages and benefits for local workers as well. Under the PPP, this stratagem foreign recruitment of workers will likely spread to the education system and the wider public service. Guyanese workers will end up being second-class workers in their own country, and 3) the government is trying to secretly introduce foreigners into our society, with total disregard of the views and concerns of the people of Guyana.”

Norton added that it should not be missed by Guyanese that the choice of Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan workers is deliberate since as citizens from the Commonwealth, in one year these migrants will become eligible to vote in Guyana. “Consequently, this is a clear attempt by the PPP regime to use migrants to boost its fading popularity in its traditional strongholds. It is important to note that the government in coming to power deliberately closed the Charles Rosa Nursing School in Linden thus preventing the training of health workers. In addition, there are many young people who can be trained to become health workers. The PPP strategy seems to be to underpay health workers and public servants generally, leave them in poor working conditions and to reduce the training of Guyanese to fill these positions. The government clearly is creating the conditions for health workers and public servants to migrate so that they can replace them with foreigners who they are likely to exercise control over. The government needs to desist from this destructive strategy and create conditions conducive to Guyanese wanting to be health workers and public servants and remain in Guyana. We therefore call for a halt to this process.”

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• Aubrey Norton, Bangladeshi, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo and Opposition Leader, health workers, Vice President

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