US governor won’t apologise for ‘hard to understand Indians’ remark
The governor of the US state of Maine has refused to apologise for commenting on hard-to-understand workers from Bulgaria or India.
The governor of the US state of Maine has refused to apologise for commenting on hard-to-understand workers from Bulgaria or India.
Republican governor Paul LePage was chuckling on Saturday at the state party convention when he said he needed an interpreter to understand some foreign workers.
He said on Wednesday that it was “meant as a joke,” but he acknowledged that “maybe it was a bad joke.”
He told Maine’s WVOM-FM that he’s not politically correct and that he won’t apologise for that. And he said that he’s had difficulty trying to give an order in a restaurant with foreign workers, “period.”
Read: Workers from India are hardest to understand: Republican governor
LePage made his comments on Saturday as he criticised a referendum proposal to raise Maine’s minimum wage to $12. LePage supports raising the wage by a lesser amount.
At another rally on Friday, Republican front-runner Donald Trump had moaned about Indians performing outsourced back-office operations for his credit card company.
Read: Donald Trump mocks Indian call centres, but says India is a great nation
He has also complained about workers form China, Mexico and other countries taking away American jobs, which he has promised voters he will bring back.