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FARM WORKERS ISSUES
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CHOUHAN DEMANDS ANSWERS FOR STRANDED FARM WORKERS |
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New Democrat MLA Raj Chouhan questioned the B.C. Liberal government this week in the Legislature on vehicle safety checks that left farm workers stranded by the side of the highway.
"Who will be responsible to provide safe transportation to farm workers and who will make sure they get their lost wages paid by the labour contractors while waiting in these cases?" Chouhan, the MLA for Burnaby-Edmonds, asked. "When an unsafe van is impounded during a roadside inspection, farm workers are left stranded on the roadside."
Chouhan noted that during three days of roadside inspections of motor vehicles, three vans owned by farm labour contractors were taken off the road because of serious mechanical defects and 10 more vans were found with other major defects.
"Despite the tragic fatal accident on March 7, which killed three farm workers and seriously injured 13 others, farm labour contractors are still transporting workers in unsafe, dangerous vehicles. The harvesting season is fast approaching and there will be hundreds of these vehicles driving thousands of farm workers to fields during the season," said Chouhan, a former president of the Canadian Farmworkers Union.
Chouhan said that the answers provided by Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon were totally inadequate.
"We will continue to stand up for farm workers who have been ignored or put down by the B.C. Liberal government," he said. "Their expressions of sympathy for the accident victims have not been followed with the action that farm workers need."
Meanwhile, PICS used the 200th anniversary of abolition of slave trade to slam the government on its neglect of farm workers.
It said: "This week we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of abolition of slave trade but slavery with the farm workers continues. Farm workers have been denied basic human rights granted to all other workers. Many provinces in Canada, for example in Alberta, farm workers are not considered as workers and they are not included in the Labour Code.
"Similarly, foreign farm workers are brought into the country and left at the mercy of employers. Imported foreign workers are not given E.I., pension benefits or vacation pay although the benefits are deducted from their pay. Health and Safety benefits are not provided to guest workers.
"Immigration remains employer driven in order to meet their needs but slave-like conditions in farm work continues. Two hundred years ago the colonial regime got rich by selling flesh of the black people. Slavery continued as the colonial regime imported workers from India to Malaysia, Fiji, and the Caribbean countries to develop their economy and meet the greed and lust of employers.
"The practice of bonded labour must discontinue and all the imported workers must be given landed status, just and equal rights enjoyed by all Canadian workers. After 200 years the consciousness of society has not changed a bit and the power imbalance among poor and rich is widening."
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