Word: laborers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Some countries, however, are no longer as willing to extend a red carpet toward the globetrotting Chinese. Although political strings might not come with Beijing's cash, there are economic catches. The roads, mines and other infrastructure on offer are most often built by armies of imported Chinese labor, cutting down on the net financial benefit to recipient nations. Chinese companies investing abroad also tend to ship in nearly everything used on building sites, from packs of dehydrated noodles to the telltale pink-hued Chinese toilet paper. It's not only the contracted Chinese workers who show up, either. Within...
...their tribal territory being used for mineral extraction, no matter what document was signed in China's Great Hall of the People. Environmentalists cried foul over plans to deposit mine waste in the sparkling Basamuk Bay, while local workers protested conditions that even P.N.G.'s Minister for Labor and Industrial Relations David Tibu described as slavelike and "not fit for pigs or dogs." Skirmishes repeatedly broke out between villagers and the 1,500-plus imported Chinese laborers, some of whom were working illegally in P.N.G. At the same time, anger has boiled over because of an influx of thousands...
...Labor issues are compounded by environmental concerns voiced by international academics. The Australia-based Mineral Policy Institute believes that Ramu NiCo's assurances about mine-waste disposal in the Basamuk Bay not poisoning the fish-rich waters are based on "fatally flawed" data. (Other Chinese companies have been accused of importing vast amounts of illegal timber from P.N.G.'s dwindling forests, even as Beijing tries to protect its own natural bounty by cracking down on illicit logging at home.) "With other countries, we try to make foreign companies accountable by lobbying shareholders or raising public awareness in that country," says...
...classes. Yet not a single Chinese I spoke to at Ramu or Basamuk said they had ever attended any of these language courses. Furthermore, despite assurances that the Chinese working on-site were only engineers or other specialists, I saw Chinese sweeping up construction debris and doing other menial labor that locals could surely do. (See pictures of the making of modern China...
...Discrepancies between national immigration policy and local reality are acknowledged even by P.N.G.'s Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Assistant secretary Nadile bluntly tells me she suspects that most Chinese who entered the country have done so without the necessary visas and work permits. Today, in major cities across P.N.G., the vast majority of so-called kai bars, or fast-food restaurants, are run by recent Chinese immigrants, as are nearly all the grocery stores. But few Chinese have the correct papers to run such businesses. I ask Nadile if she can tell me of a place nearby that...