The Business Standard reports how Chinese companies that earn contracts to construct steel and power plants are also needing to construct villages for the Chinese workers they’re importing as well:
“We have executed, for a major secondary steel company, a township for 2,000-odd Chinese workers at a location in Jharkhand, where they would be erecting, commissioning and operating a combined steel and power unit,” the chairman of a leading architecture and civil engineering firm told Business Standard… When contacted, two Chinese supervisors with English-speaking skills serving at projects in Bengal, said while they had problems with the quality and speed of work done by Indian workers, they found the working and living conditions comparable to the Chinese facilities.
“We find many of the foods we prefer and have collectively hired domestic staff from our country, while 60-70 of us have moved our families to Kolkata as well,” said Jin Bao, one of the two engineers… Interestingly, a secondary steel project in Bengal recently acquired sudden notoriety after 70-odd Chinese engineering workers allegedly beat up Indian workers following sharp differences over the quality and integrity of the work executed by local workers like fabricators and welders.
The conflict was so violent that the local police had to intervene, hospitalise a group of Indian workers and arrest some Chinese supervisors on specific assault charges, said a highly-placed bureaucrat in the West Bengal government. But he added that he did not expect such an incident to slow down the rush of Chinese project teams coming to India.
See also past CDT posts on Sino-Indian relations.
