Sunday Examiner, Page: 3
Sunday, 21 May 2006
TWO months ago, seven East Timorese workers disembarked from their first ever aeroplane flight, touched the ground at Burnie with relief arid then blessed themselves. Today the men are part of Tasmania's biggest building project - the construction of the third and final stage of the Roaring 40s Woolnorth wind farm. The buffeted plains of Tasmania's far North-West tip are about as non-tropical as you can get and the East Timorese are feeling the cold. But they said the reception they have received in Circular Head has been warm.
"This is the first time we have left our home, the first time we have seen wind towers and the biggest project we have worked on," Josa da Carvalho Ancieto said on site this week. Mr Ancieto is working on the construction of the control building at Studland Bay where another 25 wind turbines are being erected in a joint venture construction job between Hazell Bros and Areva. His colleagues are working on the transmission line wliich will carry power from Woolnorth to the Tasmanian electricity grid, operating excavators and rollers, laying cable and fixing steel on the turbine footings. By year's end, Tasmania's only wind farm will boast 62 turbines and generate enough energy to power all the houses in a city the size of Launceston.
Nine of the 25 concrete pads have been poured and under ground cabling work will begin next week. The East Timorese workers are employed in Dili by Caltech which is headed by French-Canadian Jean Vezinaother. Their boss was a little nervous about how the East Timorese would fit in on a Tasmanian construction site. But he need not have worried the workers are soaking up Australian culture reacquainting themselves with Hazell Bros personnel they have worked with in East Timor and making friends "We like a beer after work Josa da Carvalho Ancieto said with a grin.
"But just one or two. Beer is good for sleeping not working." Mr Vezina said the East Timorese workers had put a lot of effort in before embarking on their six-month stint at Woolnorth. Five nights a week over two months the men studied English after work. Other cultural changes took a
little longer to grasp. "It was the first time the men had left. The inland, their first time on a plane and we were a little worried about how they would cope with the travel timetable," Mr Vezina said. The men themselves were so intent on making it to the airport on time, they devised a sleeping rotation system at the hotel to ensure someone was awake at all times.
The average full-time construction worker in East Timor earns about $3000 a year. The apprentice wage they are being paid at Woolnorth is about 10 times higher than what they earn at home. But it was not the lure of extra money which attracted them to the job. "We did not tell them how much they would be paid until they arrived," Mr Vezina said.
However the Tasmanian stint represents a huge opportunity to workers from a country where 42 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. Hazell Bros human resources manager Jon Schwaiger said the East Timorese workers would gain skills in Tasmania which they could then take home and pass on to others. But Mr Vezina said the aim of the overseas work programme was not just technical training. "It is good for them to see construction projects of this scale but it is also about the social interface," Mr Vezina said.
"What they probably gain most is pride. Their time in Tasmania will be talked about for generations."
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