PHILIPSBURG—Labour and Health Minister Emil Lee says “there is no basis” for statements made in a New York Times article dated December 27 that referred to hundreds of Venezuelan workers having signed three-year contracts and migrated to the island to work for US $10 an hour.
When asked whether authorities had received employment permit requests for hundreds of Venezuelan contractors, Lee said: “I have been in touch with Labour Affairs. There is no basis for the statements made in the article. We haven’t received any bulk applications for Venezuelan or Chinese nationals as construction workers.”
The New York Times article entitled “Once a Cash Cow, Venezuela’s Oil Company Now Verges on Collapse,” said residents of the South American country have migrated abroad in search of work and better lives and hundreds of oil workers have signed three-year contracts in recent weeks to work for $10 an hour in construction helping this Caribbean island to rebuild following the September hurricanes.
The focus of the article was the crumbling Venezuelan oil industry due to dysfunctional management, rampant corruption and the country’s crippling economic crisis. The deepening troubles at the state oil company, the country’s economic mainstay, threaten to further destabilise a nation and government facing a dire recession, soaring inflation and unbridled crime, as well as food and medicine shortages, the article stated.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/72563-no-mass-influx-of-venezuelan-workers
View comments
Hide comments