Vigil in Canada for dead Jamaican farm worker
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BY INDI MCLMONT
Observer staff reporter
Saturday, August 31, 2002
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A vigil was planned for yesterday in Ontario, Canada for Jamaican farm worker, Ned Livinston Peart, who was crushed to death last week by a 12,000-pound kiln of tobacco.
The vigil was also to serve the dual purpose of highlighting the harsh working conditions that migrant farm workers undergo in Canada, officials there said.
"The Federal and provincial government here needs to shoulder more responsibility for the migrant farm workers," organiser at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Chris Ramsaroop, told the Observer. "Migrant workers from Mexico and the Caribbean have virtually no rights while working in Canada."
According to Ramsaroop, farm workers are excluded from health and safety legislation. "This means that they cannot refuse dangerous working conditions, they cannot form joint health and safety committees and they do not have the right to know what dangerous chemicals or work hazards they face (that is pesticide use on farm)," he said.
His organisation, he said, had done a report recommending that, among other things, the federal government transfers the responsibility and administration of migrant workers' programmes to the Ministry of Labour.
Ramsaroop also charged that the current administrators, the Human Resources Development Canada, under their Employment and Immigration programmes, simply do not have a mandate to address employer/employee work-related issues.
"Migrant workers should not come to Canada and be treated as second-class citizens," he said. "They should have health protection and their rights respected." He said that the vigil was one way to make sure that Ned Livinston Peart's death was not in vain.
"Migrant farm workers are an integral part of the community. Their work, their lives and their deaths should not be forgotten. In order to ensure this, the CLC, community, labour and migrant worker activists will be holding a vigil to remember the unnecessary death of Brother Peart," Ramsaroop said.
An average of about 18,000 migrant workers go to Toronto each year.
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