“I work with a construction company but I am not a ‘casual’ staff, I am a contract staff. There’s a difference: we contract staff are employed to work on certain projects and when the project is over, that’s it – we leave. Whereas the ‘casual’ workers are the ones directly employed by the company and they work under the company.
You see, when big construction companies like the one I work with get contracts, whomever gives them the contract doesn’t pay the company all at once, they pay them in instalments. When the companies get the first ‘advance’, the companies will work on the project only as far as the money released takes them, then they’d stop. When that happens, we contract staff will have to leave site and go back to find whatever jobs we can find. Sometimes when the portion of the project that is yet to be completed, then the company will finish it up with their casual staff and they won’t call us the contract workers to come again.
That is how these things work.
Sometimes, when they need a project to be completed very quickly, they hire us contract staff but when there’s no rush, they run their projects with their casual staff. That’s why I am doing this okada business because, when there is no project requiring we contract staff, I will have to put food on the table for my family.
Had I not been a contract worker for a construction company, and had I not been an okada rider, I’d have loved to be a DJ. In fact, before 2012, I used to be a DJ; but then I met Christ five years ago and after I gave my life to Christ, I realized that it was going to be difficult for me to be a good Christian and be a DJ too so I gave up being a DJ so that I could be a good Christian.”
