The Department of Labour is taking the owner of the Aracari Resort to court for several breaches of the labour laws after a security guard was dismissed for refusing to chase dogs out of the compound.
Five charges have been brought against Sasenarain Shewnarain and he will soon be summoned to attend court. The charges are failure to pay sum in lieu of termination, failure to produce records requested, failure to grant leave with pay, failure to give notice of termination and failure to pay overtime.
Junior Social Protection Minister Simona Broomes told Stabroek News that the importance in this particular case is not the charges, but the level of exploitation that workers face. She said that since she took office in May she has been noticing a man averaged to be in his 50s frequently visiting the ministry. The man later came to be identified as Oadhaw Katwaru, an employee of the Aracari Resort at Versailles, West Bank Demerara who had been fired.
Broomes said that acting on the man’s complaint, the employer was contacted. The employer sent a witness to a scheduled meeting early last week to state that Katwaru’s behaviour was disrespectful to Shewnarain.
Broomes said it was only after she inquired, that she learnt that the man was dismissed because he refused to chase dogs. The man explained to the minister that his shift had already ended when the “boss” called and said to chase the dogs out of the compound. He said that the man related to the “boss”, that his shift had already ended and that he was finished working and that this should be related to the guard on duty.
Broomes said that the man proceeded to give his colleague the telephone so that she could receive the instruction. She said that the following day when he turned up for work he was fired. “The boss said that he is dismissed because he failed to do his job,” she said.
The minister said she was shocked that a witness would come to the department to confirm that the man was dismissed all because he did not chase a dog.
The minister said that Katwaru explained that the compound, which is big, does not have proper fencing and as such dogs would enter.
The minister said too that on further enquiry she learnt that Katwaru who had been working there for several years had never gone on annual leave and was not paid overtime.
Broomes said Katwaru had been going to the ministry for five months and the employer never once turned up.
It was only after he received word that the minister would be looking at the complaint that for the first time a representative of the resort was sent to the ministry to attend a meeting.
She described the representative as “disrespectful.” The story behind the dismissal she stressed is “shameful.”
Broomes told Stabroek News that a labour officer had gone to the resort and met with Shewnarain who made it clear that he will not pay Katwaru any money for his immediate termination of service and as such he would go before the court. It was as a result of this, the department filed charges.
“Since I have been here, I have said that there is no act or law written by Simona Broomes. They are on the books and I will enforce them. He [the employer] took a position, he indicated that he has the ability and the money to go to the court and so he wants to go to the court. I don’t know how he finds that in the best interest of his company but at the end of the day that is his right. He wants to go to the court; the act provides for it [so] we go to the court.”
Broomes added, “When someone works you don’t see [just] the worker or the man, we are talking about a family.”
The minister said that it is because of her concerns about the continuous exploitation of workers that she is engaging the private sector “I am seeing it day by day.
You have got to move swiftly to correct this,” she said, adding that the exploitation and the violation of workers’ rights will eventually lead from one thing to the other.
Broomes said she has never seen men cry the way she is seeing them crying at the Department of Labour. “That is sad for me,” she stressed.
She said her ministry’s swift response to these continuous violations was part of the formation of a partnership with the private sector and other stakeholders such as the chambers of commerce and the unions.
In cases of workers’ exploitation and violation, she said that the ministry’s stance will be to call upon the union to properly represent workers. She said that often, the department receives complaints that the unions are failing to represent workers’ interests.
