Moviment Graffitti have condemned the termination of dozens of self-employed couriers’ contracts working for the app-based company Bolt just days before the new year.

The group blamed the move on the new “half-baked” legislation enacted on 21st October “to ensure that persons engaged to provide paid services consisting of the delivery of any consumer product, gain access to labour and social protection rights by ensuring the correct determination of their employment status”.

Graffiti accused Bolt and the government of colluding to leave a loophole through which they can exploit their employees, sometimes referred to as modern day slaves.

“Rather than acknowledging its self-employed workers as employees, which is what the government’s legislation is meant to achieve, Bolt instead decided to force self-employed couriers to either work for exploitative recruitment agencies or otherwise end up jobless.”

“By failing to ban exploitative recruitment agencies from the sector, which are known to carry out practices like siphoning off half the drivers’ pay per delivery and withholding leave entitlement, as well as extracting heavy fees which leave drivers indebted, the government has allowed a loophole that is being exploited by Bolt to push out couriers who do not wish to work for agencies.”

They suggest that if the government feels that the gig economy is essential to the island’s economy it should ban these parasitic employment agencies from operating in this country.