From the routine deception of commercial “giveaways” and the numerous promotions to increase sales, to the occasional real offers of gifts; from the varied forms of exploitation of labour by greedy unscrupulous employers to the threat by under-performing public abilities to deprive the poor of their services, you just know that the “Season” is upon us.

Yes, poor economically-challenged Guyana is already in the throes of preparation for the weeks- long (12-day?) Christian festival of Christmas. Note that it is actually Christian. However, frankly speaking, this Christian (religious?) observance transcends and supersedes all other national celebrations in terms of multi-ethnic, multi-religious participation! Even though the Muslims, Hindus or Baha’is won’t go to the Christian churches or nativity ceremonies, they join those Christians in gift-giving, using the period to refurbish and renovate homes and to sing all the songs and eat all the food of “the season.”

Unfortunately, this same season, with all its real or contrived or manufactured expectations, is a time for exploitation. So I use this piece to alert the poor, the needy and the expectant about their rights in their work-places – workplaces run by their uncaring, greedy, selfish, unscrupulous employers. Those employers know that the semi-literate the illiterate, the single-parent young women, the under-age and the unqualified need the paltry wages doled out to them at weekends. When or if the exploited employee threatens to go to the Labour Ministry — or actually goes – more often than not she loses the job. (And after all, this is now Christmas!).

I do believe that the Ministry of Labour, its officers and inspectorate should be more proactive even pre-emptive in the interest of the nation’s vulnerable workers – the non-unionised, the country’s employed poor. The violations and exploitation are varied and many.

The exploitation