WHEN the Sunday Express arrived at Ramsaran Trace, Bejucal Road, Cunupia, and walked into the site that houses about 100 workers of the Beijing Luijing Construction Company (TT) Ltd, the first thing we noticed was the pungent urine smell.

During the visit on Friday the Chinese immigrant workers smiled and nodded, most of them sitting around. None of the workers could speak English but some muttered ’home, China’ and complained ’no money’. In one room where one worker was trying to sleep and his bunk-mate at the top was reading, a picture of US President Barack Obama was hung up.

Caroni public health inspector Deodath Gayadeen was also on site measuring the living quarters of the workers. The Sunday Express learned that there were six workers in each room which measured ten feet wide and 15 feet long.

St Helena/Warrenville councillor Shama Deonarine, who visited the site on Thursday with public health officials, described the conditions as ’really, really terrible’ to the Sunday Express in a telephone interview. She noted that when the officers returned on Friday they advised the Beijing Luijing officials on certain remedial works to be done on the hygiene situation on the bathroom and kitchen.

During the Sunday Express visit a representative of the company said it was ’private property’, barred any more pictures and escorted us off the property. Another company representative who asked not to be named said the workers were supposed to clean their own rooms and toilets.

’You don’t have no maid here.’

The workers came to public attention when about 100 of them staged a protest on Tuesday on the Uriah Butler Highway, claiming they had not been paid in two months and they wanted to go home. Some of the protesting workers were arrested and Beijing Luijing reportedly applied to the Immigration Division to have the work permits of 32 workers revoked because of breach of contract.

Beijing Luijing is working on the Aranjuez Junior Secondary School and the Five Rivers Secondary School, having finished the Tranquillity Government Primary School last week. The two projects were stalled due to the protests.

The company stated in a release on Friday that workers were actually disputing a deposit fee which they had forfeited. On the issue of poor living conditions the company said the conditions in the media ’are not recognisable to us as conditions provided to our employees’ but did not discuss the issue further.

Trade union leaders, political groups and a number of other bodies have condemned the ’slavery’ conditions the workers were exposed to and called for an investigation.

Labour Minister Rennie Dumas, other ministry officials and the Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) have met with Beijing Luijing to discuss the issues of deferred earnings, claims for outstanding wages and duration of contracts.

On the living conditions issue the OSH officers found that the premises were removed from the work site and outside the OSH Act, but they did use ’moral suasion’ to have remedial measures taken regarding general hygiene at the site.

Broadening the issue of Chinese immigrant workers, whom the Government have praised for their work ethic and rapid pace, the Sunday Express also visited the Frederick Street housing of Chinese workers of China-based Shanghai Construction Group (SCG). The workers are currently at the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port of Spain, a project of the embattled Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago.

Like the Cunupia site there was a urine smell, a communal concrete sink and workers had their clothes hung out to dry. One garbage bin was overflowing and the room sizes also appeared similar to ones in Central.

One Chinese worker told the Sunday Express that three to four workers stayed in one room and the size was ’more space than when I worked in China’. He said the conditions were ’better than I imagined’, had no complaints about the toilet facilities though he found the overall site ’just kind of dirty’.

He reported that there were about 300 workers currently living at the site and a lot of people were leaving and going back to China, about 30 per week.

He also provided the workers’ schedule: they start at 7.30 a.m. and work until 10.30 a.m. then break for lunch and rest, return to work from 1 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. He said sometimes they ’overwork’ to have the site ready in time for the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) next month, but he had no problem with it.

Returning to the Cunupia site, Deonarine said the Town and Country Planning Division had to bear some of the blame for the situation, as it was taking too long to approve or reject the application from Beijing Luijing. She said the company had applied for a warehouse office since October but the division continued to ’drag its feet’.