them on demand, says a Government backbencher.

Mrs. Grace Bell MP, who has been investigating illegal workers in the industrial cleaning business, said guest workers were already required to carry their Government work permits.

But the letter-sized documents are not laminated and are not easily carried in a wallet, Mrs. Bell told The Royal Gazette . When workers are challenged to produce them, one frequently hears "this nonsense about how I left my work permit at home''.

If guest workers were instead required to carry wallet-sized identity cards, "they could also have a picture embossed in plastic like a driver's licence'', Mrs. Bell said.

"If challenged, it should be required by law that they have to produce it.'' Mrs. Bell, managing director of Houseprouds Cleaning Service on Reid Street, has complained that illegal workers are widespread in the industrial cleaning field and have even been cleaning Government schools.

Such abuses make it hard for companies hiring Bermudian cleaners to survive, she said.

To address the problem, Mrs. Bell also called for: Making industrial cleaning a field in which work permits will not be issued, except for operators of some specialised equipment; Sharply increasing fines for hiring illegal workers; and Prosecuting not just contractors that hire the illegal workers, but the workers themselves, as well as the companies that hire the contractors.

Mrs. Bell said she has spent many evenings watching office buildings to monitor the activities of other cleaning companies and the workers they employ.

But the "well-orchestrated and reprehensible subterfuge'' was getting stronger, with companies working at wee hours in the morning and rotating workers so they could not be as easily monitored, she claimed.

The problem of illegal workers in Bermuda was a "massive'' one, she said.

Resentment and "a quiet rage'' were building up among Bermudians as a result.

Mrs. Bell produced newspaper clippings from the Mid-Ocean News from 1968 which she said showed the problem was one of long standing.

The articles singled out workers from Portugal and the West Indies and quoted former Premier Sir Edward Richards, then deputy chairman of the Board of Immigration, as saying: "We know there are lots of people working in Bermuda illegally.

"It is known to the Board that on certain sites, as soon as an inspector arrives, some people disappear, and nobody seems to know where they are.'' Mrs. Bell, who represents St. George's South for the United Bermuda Party, said that in some respects nothing has changed since 1968.