CAPTAIN BALFOUR (Middlesex, Hornsey)To ask the Under Secretary for the Colonies if under Sections 181 and 182 of the British Guiana Ordinance of 1891, indentured immigrants working on a plantation are transferred with the sale or lease of the plantation to the service of the purchaser or new lessor, without being consenting parties to such transfer; and, if so, whether any alteration of such provisions is contemplated by the Government.
(Answered by Mr. Churchill.) Section 181 of the British Guiana Ordinance provides that every lessee whose lease expires is entitled to have the indentures of any immigrants on the plantation transferred for the unexpired remainder of their term of service, to any employer approved by the Immigration Agent General, the lessor of the estate having the first option. Section 182 provides that where a plantation is sold or leased, or passes by devise or inheritance, any indentured immigrant on it shall render the same service to the purchaser or lessee as to his former employer. It must be noted that the immigrant enters into an agreement to emigrate with an officer representing the Colonial Government and not with any individual employer, and the Government is responsible for his well-being. The Government provides by Ordinance 51 that he shall not, during the period of his indenture, suffer by unemployment due to any changes affecting the owership of plantations. The particular person who owns the plantation is unknown to the immigrant till he arrives in the Colony, but he relies on the Government for the due observance of the terms offered to him. Under the Ordinance the governor has very wide powers of determining the indentures of any immigrant if, in his opinion, the management of any estate is unsatisfactory. It should be added that under this system of colonisation, through the operation of a labour contract, more than 50 per cent, of the Indian immigrants become permanent settlers. No substantial amendment of the Ordinance seems to be required by any facts at present within the knowledge of the Secretary of State.