Dear Ed, LOCAL authorities are trying to get information on the nationality of workers at the 2012 Olympics site to get a greater share of jobs for East Enders. But Tower Hamlets should look at who it is employing, or who its subcontractors are employing, with this belated Olympics concern. I've just seen a team of young Polish men painting fencing in Victoria Park. Is this so skilled that local workers could not be doing?

Dear Ed,

IT SEEMS that local authorities in East London are trying to get information on the nationality of workers at the 2012 Olympics site to get a greater share of jobs for East Enders (East London Advertiser, February 12).

Tower Hamlets should look at who it is employing, or who its subcontractors are employing, with this belated Olympics concern.

I've just seen a team of young Polish men painting the fencing in Victoria Park. Is this so skilled that local or any British workers could not be doing? Obviously not.

The council should be looking to its own hiring and contracting practices. We would move forward if every local authority in Britain did this.

George Galloway, the MP for Bow and Bethnal Green—though not answerable to the people there—is making the same noises.

How strange he is now so concerned about jobs for local people rather than foreign workers, when he lobbied so enthusiastically for ethnic chefs’ to be included in the Government’s list of skills shortages’ for immigration.

These jobs could have gone to people in the East End, including ethnic women, who are obviously authentic cooks. Instead, that lobbying resulted in an open door, with no numerical limits, with any Sylheti being brought into the country as a skilled chef’.

May Thomas

Watney Street, Shadwell