St Lucia

Exploitation of St Lucian Technically Trained Workers. In November 2005, Anguilla expressed an interest in attracting technically qualified St Lucians to become engaged in the construction industry in Anguilla. We told Prime Minister Dr Kenny Anthony so. He responded with the hope that the St Lucian workers would build bridges of friendship when they came to work in Anguilla. He obviously thought it would all be done above board.

Shortly after, Anguillian contractors began to telephone technically qualified persons in St Lucia inviting them to come to work in Anguilla. From reports from my contractor friends, I thought the system was working well. Until now.

I have been receiving a disturbing number of reports about what appears to be a systematic scheme of exploitation of these St Lucian workers in the construction industry in Anguilla. It is also a fraud on the government revenue.

If it was only one person complaining, it might be discounted as a personal disappointment. But, two complaints, and confirmation of the essentials of the story from an independent source, are impossible to ignore.

The specific complaint is that certain Anguillian building contractors, one of them with a lot of influence, specialize in importing technically qualified St Lucians to work for them in Anguilla. The contractor pays for them to come to Anguilla. They are encouraged to come in to the island as tourists. They are categorized as “Caribbean visitors”. The Anguillian contractor introduces them to a senior officer in the Immigration Department. He applies for an extension of their visitor’s visa. He tells the workers that work permit applications are in the works. He puts them to work on his site on the assurance that he is permitted to do so. He can usually keep them illegally at work for about six months.

The scam is officially called a “one-month extension”. It is comparatively inexpensive. It can supposedly be renewed for a total of only three months, after which the worker has to go home. In theory, the Caribbean visitors are supposed to return, and start another three month period. None of this is properly explained to them. They continue to work in a sort of legal and ethical limbo.

The St Lucians in question are literate, technically qualified, and hard workers. Best of all, when they complain, they can be easily got rid of.

When they become insistent about getting properly paid, and their status in Anguilla regularized as promised, he then has them deported. The local authorities go along with this scam. After all, these workers are here illegally, aren’t they?

My enquiries indicate that the official line is that government has adopted a policy to “help our Caribbean brothers”. There is a dirty underbelly to this policy. The way it is implemented is to avoid the time consuming process of applying for work permits. No work permit application is ever made. You avoid the expense of paying for the work permit. You do not have to put up a large deposit for the return of the workers. No social security payments are ever deducted. No workmen’s compensation insurance ever covers them. They receive a cash payment in an underhand sort of way, trying to entrap them into complicity with some unmentioned sort of illegality. They initially go along with his scheme. After all, the contractor is a very important person in Anguilla.

This scheme, naturally, is only for the favoured friends of those with influence in Anguilla.

The Governor’s Office has been made aware of the exploitation. We do not know what, if anything, they have done about it. The Immigration Department and the Labour Commissioner’s Office, must have been aware of an immigration scam since it is at least two years old. Russel Reid, the Labour Commissioner, never sees these workers. He doesn’t usually hear about them. When he stumbles upon them by accident, he claims not to know what they are doing here. He is not known to have ever proceeded against any of these exploiters. Laureen Bryan, Chief Immigration Officer, has never been known to initiate prosecution of any Anguillian employer of illegal immigrant labour. They must accept responsibility for the public perception that they are turning a blind eye to it. At any rate, my information is that none of them has done a thing to put a stop to these activities, despite having received numerous complaints.

The way the contractors use the policy defrauds the government revenue of work permit fees. It unlawfully avoids paying social security contributions on wages and salaries. It is an evasion of regulations requiring police clearances and medical checkups. It deprives the workers of disability and other social security benefits. It turns them into unwitting criminals. It is a clever way of avoiding the announced moratorium on the granting of work permits. You simply do not apply for one. And, our public service authorities, at least suspecting all these details, have kept quiet.

You may say that we need not feel sorry for the St Lucians. What is happening to them is no worse than happened to thousands of Anguillian young men forced to work illegally in St Thomas in the old days. What is objectionable is that the fraud on the work permit policy is being facilitated by people at the top of government. The main perpetrators are the very men who helped to set the nation's policy. And, the regulators and law enforcement authorities turn a blind eye.

I have made enquiries of the officials. The Governor’s office’s response is that it is not true that they are doing nothing about the complaint. All other responses have been equally evasive.

If Dr Anthony only knew what was really going on, I wonder what he would say now!

When the same Anguillian youth we wonder about look at how rotten this whole system is, from the top to the bottom, is it any wonder they explode into violence?

They cry out, “Bun fiyah pon Babylon!”

I wonder, why would they say such a thing?

Slum Development

Slum at Mariners. Whatever happened to Anguilla? First, I learn about our importation and use of slave labour. Human trafficking was not enough. Now, we have to turn a derelict hotel into Anguilla’s first slum?

The dolphin prison people imported Mexican slaves into Anguilla to relocate their pens and animals from Barnes Bay to Sandy Ground. Where to house them? Why, in the abandoned hotel at Sandy Ground, of course. The fact that the buildings are rat holes, there is no electricity or water, no sewage disposal, no kitchen facilities, are not a problem. It is not as if we have any health regulations in Anguilla. Here, there is no one with the authority or credibility to insist that minimum standards are maintained. Besides, they are Mexicans, hardly human beings at all. So, have a look at the photos below. This is how we allow their employers to house and maintain them. Click on any photo to see the scene in its full glory.

Great going, Anguilla. Chalk up another victory for crass profits over humanity. Anguilla leads the way again.

Hunger Strike

Day Two. I had planned to tell you today the latest news about the relocation of the new dolphinarium. It is supposedly being moved from Sandy Ground to Blowing Point. But, humans are more important, in some respects, than dolphins. We have a developing humanitarian crisis in Anguilla that needs to be told. It involves the rebellion by the Indian slave labour that our government has permitted the KOR Group and Viceroy Resorts to import into Anguilla.

It was at 3:00 pm yesterday Tuesday 26 June that the police stopped the Indian workers at South Hill. They had been walking into the Valley to complain to the Labour Commissioner. Iwandai and Heartbeat Radio broadcast live for some hours from the scene. Eventually, the Commissioner of Police relented. He permitted their Anguillian sympathisers to drive the Asians to the Labour Commissioner’s office in The Valley. There were then at least fifty of them. The Labour Commissioner met with a few of their representative. There, they told their tale of the unbearable conditions which they were treated to at Barnes Bay. Wages of US$180.00 per month. Meat for dinner just once per week. Work-related injuries that remained untreated. Eleven-hour days, six days per week, in the blazing sun. Eight men bunking in a container in the container village to which they were confined. Anguillians were affected by their plight. Many of them had lost their better paying jobs when these Asians had been brought in to replace them at Viceroy. That did not stop them congregating in an unmistakable demonstration of support outside the Labour Commissioner’s offices.

That is where I found them at 3:00 pm the following day, Wednesday. When I came back from the dentist’s torture chamber in Marigot, I took a pass by the Labour Commissioner's office. I thought I would find them gone, and the problem solved by that time. I was wrong. Their numbers had increased from the original fifty to about one hundred and fifty of them.

They were squatting in and around an incomplete building across the road from the Labour Commissioner’s office. Someone had provided a tent for some shelter. I was told they had been there all day. They had spent the previous night asleep on the bare ground. They had no food, nor toilet facilities. They had a supply of water brought by sympathetic Anguillians. It was squalid and heart wrenching.

I was told the Chief Minister had not yet returned from the meeting in Cayman Islands of Overseas Territories' Chief Ministers. I believe he is still there telling them how he was the highest paid Chief Minister or Prime Minister in the West Indies. The other heads of the OECS, I am told, are not speaking to him any more. Without any provocation, he likes to remind them that his remuneration is double that of most of them. It is certainly immeasurably higher than the wages of the Indian labourers at Viceroy.

Tomorrow, the dolphins.

Slave Labour

Slave Uprising. It was not Spartacus. But, it was an uprising. Today, Tuesday 26 June, in the afternoon, the workers at Viceroy laid down their tools on the hotel building site at Barnes Bay. They had had enough. They left their Spartan quarters and marched towards the Valley. They had heard that workers could complain at the Labour Department. Of the 500 plus slave labourers housed at Viceroy, there were only about 50 on the actual march.

By the time they had reached Lower South Hill, the police were out in force. Their progress to the Valley was blocked. They were told they could not march any further. They sat down under a tree.

They asked for water. Iwandai arrived with a microphone. He began to broadcast. Heartbeat Radio 107.5 FM carried him live as he described the condition of the workers halted under the blazing sun. Radio Anguilla played soothing music. Several of the workers explained that they were only being paid a fraction of what they had been promised when they had been recruited in India. They were forced to live in cramped and squalid conditions. Their rations were not nutritious or sufficient. Then, Lolita Davis-Richardson arrived on the scene.

She demanded they be allowed their freedom to march to the Valley to make their protest at the Labour Department. A crowd of Anguillians gathered. They loudly voiced their support for the Indian workers. They protested the police action in blocking the peaceful march to the Valley. The crowd was beginning to grow. Just in time, word trickled back. The Commissioner of Police had agreed that the Indians could exercise their right to go to the Valley. Concerned Anguillians offered them lifts in pick-ups and cars. The Indians left for the Valley. There was never any violence threatened or suffered. As I departed from the scene, I wondered how the protest would play out once they reached their destination of the Valley.

We must all be relieved that it was the exploited workers who made the demonstration.

We must all have been concerned that it was the Anguillian workers who had been laid off by the arrival of the cheap Indian labour who replaced them that might have become violent. It was appropriate that it was the Indians themselves who protested. It seems to have completely bypassed government ministers that slavery has been abolished in Anguilla since 1834. They have totally ignored the mantra of all previous governments: there will be no development in Anguilla except it is demonstrably for the benefit of the Anguillians themselves. No development, no matter how deserving or desirable, will be permitted except it is principally structured and designed to benefit Anguillians. Importing 500 Indian labourers, who were to be paid slave wages, in order to replace Anguillian workers, was demonstrably not to the benefit of Anguilla or Anguillians. Our government has lost its way. Our people were on the verge of losing their soul. It was the compassion of the ordinary Anguillian that redeemed our government today.

Recent Issues

Recent Interesting Issues on Which Correspondence Has Been Received:

1. “Cocaine Imports”. Which Anguillian businessmen are the principal financiers? Photographs welcome, particularly if receiving or delivering a package.

2. “Cocaine Distribution”. Where are the major outlets? If they are so well known, why have they not been closed down? Photographs welcome.

3. “Dog Fighting”. Where are the most popular pits where dogs fight to the death? How is protection provided for the participants? Who arranges training? Is the ante still US$5,000.00 to put your dog in? Photographs would be appreciated. They will add a little colour.

4. “Prostitution”. Which are the houses that permit school girls to bring businessmen for paid sex? Which ones import girls from overseas? What keeps them from being closed down? Who controls immigration of the girls? There is only rumour, no evidence.

5. “Human Trafficking”. Is Anguilla Involved in Human Trafficking at this time, as one correspondent suggests? One way to get at an answer is to study an official definition of the term. We can start by looking at the following page taken from the website of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

“From Himalayan villages to Eastern European cities, people - especially women and girls - are attracted by the prospect of a well-paid job as a domestic servant, waitress or factory worker. Traffickers recruit victims through fake advertisements, mail-order bride catalogues and casual acquaintances.

Upon arrival at their destination, victims are placed in conditions controlled by traffickers while they are exploited to earn illicit revenues. Many are physically confined, their travel or identity documents are taken away and they or their families are threatened if they do not cooperate. Women and girls forced to work as prostitutes are blackmailed by the threat that traffickers will tell their families. Trafficked children are dependent on their traffickers for food, shelter and other basic necessities. Traffickers also play on victims' fears that authorities in a strange country will prosecute or deport them if they ask for help.

Trafficking in human beings is a global issue, but a lack of systematic research means that reliable data on the trafficking of human beings that would allow comparative analyses and the design of countermeasures is scarce. There is a need to strengthen the criminal justice response to trafficking through legislative reform, awareness-raising and training, as well as through national and international cooperation. The support and protection of victims who give evidence is key to prosecuting the ringleaders behind the phenomenon.”

Another useful site is the web page taken from the website of the Administration for Children and Families

Trafficking in persons is to be distinguished from alien smuggling. See the very instructive web page on the website of the US Department of State.

From such study, we can conclude that if any Anguillian official received a financial reward to permit the Far East labour that has recently come to soujourn with us in the West End of the island, a high crime may well have been committed.

6. “How to Cover Your Tracks”. Two different correspondents point out that there are some additional precautions you should consider. They include:

(a) When retiring or resigning from a corrupt employer, photograph all the relevant documents relating to questionable transactions before you leave. It costs nothing, and you never know when you will need them! Make sure you do not get caught. Transfer any tape recordings to digital format, they are easier to store and last longer. Keep a back-up on a thumb drive in a secure location, like a safety deposit at your bank.

(b) “Recent File Lists” tell an employer what documents you have been recently working on.

(c) An employer can often tell when a “USB device” was connected to a computer by looking into the registry using forensic tools.

(d) Windows creates files called “prefetch” which can tell an employer when a programme was launched. This can include disk wiping tools. Tools like this are generally not installed as a matter of course. So, while he cannot ascertain what was deleted, he can know that someone was trying to hide something on the computer.