Word: work
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...just talked to a nearby villager who described a PowerPoint presentation she recently made detailing environmental concerns about the mine. The engineer, like many other Chinese I meet, remains unimpressed. "All they do is chew betel nut and act lazy," he says. "They don't know how to work hard like we Chinese do." (See pictures of Chinese investment in Africa...
...telltale pink-hued Chinese toilet paper. It's not only the contracted Chinese workers who show up, either. Within a few years, their relatives invariably seem to materialize to set up shops selling cheap Chinese goods that threaten the livelihood of indigenous entrepreneurs. Locals who do get work on Chinese-funded projects complain that their bosses don't heed national labor laws ensuring minimum wage or trade-union protection. Over the past three years, anti-Chinese riots have erupted everywhere from the Solomon Islands and Zambia to Tonga and Lesotho. Tensions are also simmering in India, where the Chinese...
...July, relations reached a new nadir when P.N.G.'s chief mines inspector ordered all construction on the Ramu NiCo sites to be shut down because of significant health-and-safety concerns. Work ceased for a month before "noticeable progress" by Ramu NiCo convinced the government to allow construction to continue. The dispute echoed another flare-up that erupted last year when locals armed with slingshots critically injured another three Chinese workers over what the P.N.G. nationals considered to be workplace apartheid: everything, from their food and toilets to salaries and dormitories, they alleged, was far inferior to those...
...turned out, had entered on visas that prohibited employment. Ramu NiCo, in turn, complained that government bureaucracy was so slow that getting the proper paperwork would have taken years so they were forced to circumvent the rules. But there were other infractions. Local regulations specify that foreigners can only work in jobs that locals cannot perform and that they must be able to speak either English or pidgin. Most of the Chinese workers couldn't speak a word of either language...
...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...