Ekaa Hrim Earth Resources Management has denied the allegations levelled against it by 38 Indian nationals who fled its Batavia Village quarry in Region Seven last week, even as the Ministry of Labour continues its probe into what authorities have described as serious labour violations, occupational safety breaches, and potential human trafficking. The company’s denial, and the ministry’s measured response to date, raise a question that is not being asked loudly enough: how did this situation exist, undetected, for what workers say has been two years?
The investigation as currently framed is focused on what happened inside the quarry. That is necessary. But it is not sufficient. A credible probe must go much further back, to the moment these 38 Indian nationals first set foot on Guyanese soil, and account for every regulatory checkpoint they should have passed through along the way.
The first question is the most basic: on what basis did these workers enter Guyana? Visitors entering the country for employment purposes are required to hold valid work permits issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs before commencing work. They do not enter on tourist visas and quietly begin operating heavy quarry machinery. If these workers entered on tourist visas and were then put to work, that is an immigration violation of the most serious kind, and it implicates not just the company but every agency that should have flagged the discrepancy. The immigration records of all 38 individuals must be examined and published.
The second question follows directly: who applied for their work permits, when were those permits granted, and under what terms? A work permit in Guyana specifies the employer, the type of work, and the duration. If the permits were issued for quarry work, the Ministry of Home Affairs approved the employment of foreign nationals in roles that could have been filled by Guyanese workers. If the permits were never applied for, then those workers were labouring illegally, and the company was operating with full knowledge of that illegality while confiscating the very documents that would have proven it.
The third question concerns the National Insurance Scheme. Every worker employed in Guyana, citizen or foreign national holding a valid work permit, is entitled to NIS contributions from their employer. Those contributions fund medical care, injury benefits, and in cases of workplace death, survivor payments. The death of Sekhar Chhetri on May 12, 2026, and the reported severe injury to another worker who lost multiple fingers at the quarry, make this question not abstract but urgent. Was NIS receiving contributions for these workers? If not, the company has been operating outside the law on multiple fronts simultaneously, and the NIS Board should be required to account for why no audit of this remote worksite was ever conducted.
The fourth question is directed squarely at the Ministry of Labour itself. Workers told Kaieteur News that no labour commissioner, minister, or safety official visited the Batavia site in the two years they were stationed there. The quarry was commissioned by President Irfaan Ali in September 2023, making it a known, government-sanctioned operation. It is not a clandestine site. It sits on land with a 15-year lease. How does a formally commissioned quarry, employing dozens of foreign nationals, go two years without a single visit from a labour inspector or an Occupational Safety and Health officer?
The fifth and perhaps most consequential question is about Saju Bhaskar, the Coimbatore-based owner of Ekaa Hrim, who also heads Texila University in Guyana. Operating two significant enterprises on Guyanese soil while allegedly running one of them in flagrant violation of labour law requires an accounting that goes beyond a 24-hour written response to the Ministry. The Guyana Revenue Authority should also be examining whether the company has been tax compliant, whether its payroll declarations match the number of workers on site, and whether the reported salary structures, which workers say covered 72 hours a week at rates that violated the National Minimum Wage Order, were ever declared to any authority.
Ekaa Hrim’s denial is its legal right. But a denial does not explain why passports were in the company’s possession in the first place. It does not explain a dead worker. It does not explain a man who lost his fingers to unsafe machinery. And it does not explain two years of silence from every regulatory body responsible for protecting workers on Guyanese soil.
The probe must answer all of these questions, or it will be remembered not as an investigation, but as a cleanup operation.
SOURCE: Kaieteur News, multiple reports, May 18 to May 20, 2026; The Tribune India, May 19, 2026; HGPTV, May 19 to 20, 2026
