KB&R imports workers to Iraq - Pay is $3 a day - taxpayers $2 Billion

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

According to an article in Tuesday’s Financial Times, US sub-contractors in Iraq are importing cheap labor from South Asia rather than hiring Iraqis.

One key reason, according to the article, is security and force protection.

<snip>

The company, which has 12 years' experience feeding US troops in the Gulf, employs 1,800 Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Nepalese in its kitchens. It uses only a few dozen Iraqis for cleaning.

In the dusty backyard of the US administrators' Baghdad palace, south Asians, housed 12 to a Saudi-made temporary cabin, organise 180,000 meals a day for US troops and administrators.

A Tamimi manager says the company pays an average salary of one Saudi riyal (Dollars 3) a day and grants leave once every two years. The contracts are awarded by Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, which in 2001 won its second Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or Logcap, contract to sub-contract the supply of US military provisions. The Logcap is open-ended and its Iraqi share is worth "in excess of Dollars 2bn", according to officials of the Defence Contract Management Agency in Baghdad.

[JoeMemphis]

1. Looks like Bush just wants to

give Iraqis the same economic miracle we have here in the States. Cheap labor is a conservative way of life.

[DBoon]

2. Slavery never ended for some people

n/t

[maggrwaggr]

3. That's just disgraceful. Unemployment at 60% in Iraq

Operation Iraqi Freedom? Yeah right.

Freedom from jobs. Freedom from food.

[izzie]

4. Sounds right. These peple can be under control

SA does the same.