More than a week after an investigation was launched into the claims of two cooks, who told authorities they were taken into the Omai Backdam to work by a dredge owner who then refused to pay them, they are yet to receive word on their payments.
“The GGMC [Guyana Geology and Mines Commission] promise us that they would help and they say they bring the man out and see how he could pay we, but since then nobody ain’t get back to us and this man working and getting gold,” one of the women, Vashawn Hopkinson, told Stabroek News yesterday.
With the Christmas holidays approaching, Hopkinson needs her money, which is excess of $300,000, to help provide for her children.
Speaking from her Kwakwani home, she related that while she has not returned to the backdam, her cousin, Dalieann Joseph, has returned, after getting a job at another camp. Joseph has reported that their former employer has had “plenty wash down and paying he workers them.”
Hopkinson said when she and Joseph gave their statements to an official at GGMC last Monday, they also provided their former boss’s cellular phone number. When the number was called, she noted, the man’s wife, who is a relative of theirs, answered and informed that he was away. In front of the two women, the GGMC officials told the woman to inform the man that he should leave the backdam and visit the office. Hopkinson and Joseph were brought out of Omai backdam on two Saturdays ago by the Guyana Women Miners’ Organisation (GWMO), with the help of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment and the police. Last Monday, statements were taken from them at the Labour and Human Services ministries, in addition to the GGMC.
Chief Labour Officer Charles Ogle had told Stabroek News that once the women filed a complaint with his office, the matter would be investigated. He had said that there have been in excess of 700 complaints for the year dealing with wages’ issues.
In some cases, Ogle had said, they would take the employer to court if s/he refused to pay the worker, while the GGMC could also put pressure on miners, who by virtue of mistreating their workers would be in breach of their licences.
The women had said that after giving statements to the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security they were given $20,000 each to purchase food items and $10,000 for their transportation to their homes at Kwakwani.
They had gone to the backdam in April with the understanding that they would have received $120,000 each per month. They had planned to leave three months later to visit their children and the dredge owner had promised to give them their wages. However, days before, he was expected to pay them he verbally abused them and later forced them out of the camp. The women remained in the backdam stranded because they had no money to leave.
GWMO President Simona Broomes, who was instrumental in getting the women to leave the area, had expressed concern over the plight of many women whom she said were being taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers.
