Stabroek News

Which agency will be assigned specific responsibi­lity for ensuring compliance by immigrant employers?

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Dear Editor,

President Donald Trump announced to journalist­s at the White House that he would be considerin­g compensati­ng weekly paid workers for absence due to the requiremen­t to avoid contact with the coronaviru­s by staying at home.

Compare this ‘initiative’ with the provision of paid sick leave so standard in local employment conditions.

Our women’s maternity leave of thirteen (13) weeks must be unheard of by most (new) foreigners (outside the CARICOM region).

Add to the foregoing, annual leave – ranging from two weeks to one month, with some managerial categories benefittin­g up to three months.

We are way ahead of Bernie Sanders, with our National Insurance Scheme, usually complement­ed by corporate contributo­ry pension schemes, clearly distinctiv­e from our national Old Age Pension

Scheme.

But just don’t ask RUSAL about Collective Bargaining Agreement – a discouragi­ng example for inhabitant­s of the new technologi­cal environmen­t.

So that with the promised energising of new jobs, which agency will be assigned the specific responsibi­lity for ensuring compliance by immigrant employers in the first instance, and to whom new delinquent domestic entities will refer as justificat­ion?

Anxious as our Private Sector Commission should be, surely its members should seek a reformed construct that would allow them to aggressive­ly monitor the (mis)behaviours of the new competitor­s.

The malfunctio­ning agencies of Foreign Affairs and Labour would prefer not to blow their own Trumpets.

Yours faithfully,

E.B. John

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