ST ANN, Jamaica — Opposition Leader Mark Golding has promised that a People’s National Party (PNP) Government will ensure that labour laws are enforced and workers’ rights protected. He was responding to questions from a construction worker who expressed concern about inequity in salaries paid to local and foreign staff.

“There is a lot of inflow of overseas workers in the construction industry and the labour laws which protect Jamaican workers are not being practised,” alleged Camara Nkrumah.

He was among those who gathered in Runaway Bay, St Ann, Wednesday for the first in a series of PNP-hosted town hall meetings dubbed the People’s Forum.

“The argument is that Jamaican workers don’t have the skill and that is a lie because we have to clean up a lot of unfinished work that they do. So I want to know what the PNP is going to do to ensure that the labour law is [followed] and Jamaican workers get equal pay,” Nkrumah added.

Construction worker Camara Nkrumah expressed concern that foreign construction workers are being paid more than Jamaicans for the same amount of work being done. He was speaking during a town hall meeting hosted by the People’s National Party in St Ann on Wednesday.

In responding, Golding referenced an article in the Gleaner that same day.

“The [Incorporated] Masterbuilders Association [of Jamaica (IMAJ)] was complaining that in the SPARK programme project the workers are not being paid in accordance with the agreed rates that had been settled in the construction industry. So there is a problem and there is a problem of compliance with our laws and standards,” he said.

In February of this year, the IMAJ and other unions representing construction workers signed the 2025-2027 Joint Industrial Council (JIC) Labour Management Agreement which would ensure that workers in the sector receive better wages and improved working conditions. Golding said a PNP administration will ensure foreign investors also obey the rules.

“The laws should be enforced and upheld and we should encourage investors in this country to understand that violations of those basic laws will not be tolerated. We are a party that respects the rights of workers and defends their rights. We set up industrial disputes tribunals in the 1970s. It was designed to bring justice to the workplace for workers who wouldn’t have had access to any sort of recourse if their rights were abused,” he said.

Golding also spoke about the importance of providing workers with the skills needed to have a robust labour force made up of local employees.

“Training is a vital part of solving our problem in terms of national productivity because the business sectors are complaining that they can’t find workers. We want to improve the training facility and process in the country so we can build out a workforce that fills those gaps,” the PNP president said. “This means we will have vocational training labs in every high school so students can achieve level-four certification in relevant skills. So by the time they leave school, if they choose not to pursue a university degree, they will still be employable at jobs that have high value-added because they have the skills.”

He stressed that the PNP has a history of advocating for Jamaica’s unrepresented workers.

“We introduced the Termination Redundancy Payments Act to ensure that if workers were made redundant, they had a benefit to get. We are the party that promotes employee share ownership; so we tried to ensure that when government was privatising companies, shares were made available to the workers,” Golding told the meeting.

“We will encourage employee share ownership, we will encourage joint industrial councils for industries that have low levels of representation and workers are often disgruntled about how they’re treated. We will have employer and employee representation on an industry-wide basis to set standards that must be upheld,” he vowed.