As stated in yesterday’s editorial, any local content emphasis should primarily be on jobs and the transfer of skills from expatriate workers to local employees over a well-defined period to create a cohort of highly skilled Guyanese that can begin to take ownership of the industry. Local content must also clearly address loopholes that enable exploitation of workers by oil and gas contractors and services providers. It must also give local businesses a reasonable chance at the provision of goods and services.
But when will the Irfaan Ali administration act? There has been enough jaw-jaw on local content policy and legislation and pointless fora and committees in the way. These delays all now come across as gaping openings for the foreign oil and gas operators to nail down as many opportunities to sate their unending appetite for deals while local businesses and workers are undermined.
Whether it is pressure from ExxonMobil and its contractors that is preventing the PPP/C government from acting on local content or just its plain incapacity and inability has not yet been determined. However, the failure to act with dispatch on oil and gas legislation marks the Ali administration as indifferent to urgently securing the interests of the Guyanese business community and workers.
The latest manoeuvre has been the announcement by the government that “consultants” – those again – will be recruited to advise not only on local content legislation but all other outstanding laws for the oil and gas industry. One can readily see how that process can take a leisurely two years before anything is on the law books.
Given that it was aware since 2015 of the needs of the petroleum sector and had within its ranks several self-professed knowledgeables in the area, the PPP/C government should have already had a viable draft local content policy if not legislation on entering office. Fourteen long, long months of its administration have elapsed without a workable local content policy or law and the complaints are continuing to mount.
The Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) yesterday issued a press release citing agitation from its constituents about being sidelined in the oil and gas business and calling on the government to table the local content legislation before the end of the year.
The GCCI said that it had taken note of the “overwhelming number” of infrastructural works which are being handled by foreign-owned companies and the “high volume of trucking, logistical and other support services which are being operated by foreign-owned companies, particularly as it relates to the oil and gas sector”.
The GCCI stated that it has been in receipt of several complaints from its membership of cases in which they are being bypassed for work in favour of the foreign companies. This, it said, occurs in spite of the indigenous Guyanese enterprise being both commercially competitive and having the technical capability.
“The Chamber reiterates that it remains supportive of foreign investment in Guyana. We encourage, however, that this not be done at the expense and displacement of indigenous Guyanese companies”, the GCCI said.
From the union, GAWU came concerns yesterday about the exploitation of workers. GAWU in a statement said that workers in the oil and gas sector here were earning pay rates equivalent to the national minimum wage. It said that it recently drew attention to the fact that the workers were in receipt of allowances which had no scientific reasoning and could be withdrawn at any time.
It added that this practice was seen as an attempt to subjugate workers.
“We also have spoken too about the absence of overtime payments to certain workers. We pointed out that at one enterprise workers were entitled to payment for 4,000 hours per annum but receiving less than 3,000 hours pay. This we considered highway robbery and a clearly exploitative practice to cheat the workers out of their due reward”, the union contended. The union should urgently bring these matters to the attention of the Ministries of Labour and Natural Resources with the relevant supporting information.
GAWU also said that its recent engagements with the Oil Workers Trade Union (OWTU) of Trinidad and Tobago have revealed stark disparities in rates-of-pay and conditions-of-work between Guyanese and unionised Trinidadian workers in the sector.
“For instance, in nearly all occupations, Trinidadian unionized workers obtained vastly superior pay rates. For instance, we noted jobs such as rigmen, electricians, operators, mechanics, and other artisans receiving ten (10) times more pay than their Guyanese counterparts. For some other jobs, the disparity was even greater. Additionally, the OWTU informed us (that) apart from pay, workers in the sector enjoy several allowances such as On Call Duty, Overtime, Subsistence Allowance, Overtime Meal Allowance, Disturbance Allowance, Travelling Allowance, Offshore Allowance, Working Out of Base, Travelling Time, Re-Scheduling of Established Working Day, among others. Additionally, our Carib-bean counterparts benefit from Deferred Compensa-tion Plan, Savings Allowance, Vacation Travel Grant Plan, Housing Aid Plan, Pension Plan, Employees Medical Plan, and Employees Benefit Plan”, the union said.
These allegations are serious and the government must take immediate steps to address the concerns raised yesterday by both the GCCI and GAWU. It must arise from the stupor that has led to legislative inaction and take interim steps before the finalisation of the local content law.
