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chaotic
weekend...
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on saturday these two boys (21 and 23 yewars old) rang for Raisa. It seems they are from her home town and her brother works with one of their dads... anyway...
They are here working through an agency called "stablemate" which gets you a visa and places you at various horse yards/stables to work in Australia. It all sounds wonderful on their web page but the reality for the guys here is thay basically the woman they re placed with doesn't need them there and so can't give them enough hours to work and then doesn't want to pay them for the hours the DO work... she just saw it at as a chance for cheap exploitative labour I think.
so first hassle -they can't get their money they are owed
Also! - they are provided with accomodation which in this case is an old 3 bedroom house on the property - mjst be at least 40 years old - and which could best be described as a 'hovel'. They have no decent furniture, broken beds to sleep on, a basic kitchen but no utensils etc etc... There is no heating unless they light the fire, which tghey tgried to do the other night.
Unfortuneately the only wood they had was green and so it wouldn't light. Being naive and probably more than a little stupid, they tried to kickstart it with petrol. This spread and as a result the floorboards are blackened (no structural damage) and som epaint on the wall is scorched.
Problem number two is that the woman now wants $3000 to fix the damage - when frankly a quick coat of paint for $20 will do the trick. Interestingly enough, $3000 is about what she owes the two of them for the past 2 months they have been there....unless she pays them these guys have about $150 between them at present.
The boys have offered to fix the damage but she won't listen to any sort of reason and that's where we come in. They got our number and asked for help as naturally their english...well it sucks.
So we have tried calling the agency - who responded to our interference by threatening to pull the boys visas and send them home! Great attitude. We in turn said we would contact the current affairs shows here in Australia as well as the local newspaper which made them back off a bit as now they are trying to get the boys to Sydney and a new place - but are not resolving the issue of the damage claim or the boys back pay. They just want them away from us I think.
So we went to the Ukrainian community here and asked the president of the club for help. He offered a few contacts, Unfortunately the best legal contact is just a little out of date so to speak - she's been dead for the past 3 years!!! Anyway, there is still the local cathlolic migration agency to speak to but we can't do this until Monday. The boys are scheduled to leave on Monday night at midnight next week... at this point.
We have managed to get a firm to agree to go out an do a formal quote on the damage (they do a lot of insurance work) but that won't be until Friday...!
So all is a little stressed here and I've clocked up 350km so far in the past 3 days driving around - some of it at 120km/h in the dead of night on dark country roads as I struggled to get from one place to anoher on time. Too bad the speed limit is only 80km/h at the time. Ah well...
Frankly, I think the boys should just forget their backpay and clear off to Sydney asap and maybe the woman will forget about the damage bill (it's a hovel remember) once the boys are out of sight and out of mind. But Raisa won't take that lying down and has vowed to fight the revolution against the imperialistic capitalistic bastards!! (*fires on the winter palace from the battleship Aurora*)
Unfortunately they can't ditch the bastard agency either as their visas are tied to the employment contracts (and that's using the word loosely..) here that they signed. If they ditch the agency they will just cancel their visas and they'll have to go home - still owing the $7000 they borrowed to get here in the first place!
It's a good thing that I'm on holiday at present because otherwise all this would be impossible... but it's still not easy.
*sigh*
bleah....
Sean
www.stablemate.com.au - if anyone cares... don't EVER join them. They are a rip-off-dodgy-brothers outfit
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(VISITOR) AUTHOR'S NAME
Little green man
MESSAGE TIMESTAMP
27 september 2005, 11:08:31
AUTHOR'S IP LOGGED
210.50.104.128
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