UPDATE to Rubber Companies' Exploitation of Liberia
Select a text and click below for speech (
A report in 2008 detailed a wide range of abuses occurring on a rubber plantation in Liberia owned by the Bridgestone/Firestone tire company. The report, titled “The Heavy Load: A Demand for Fundamental Changes at the Bridgestone/Firestone Rubber Plantation in Liberia” was published by Liberian-based Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) and exposes poor living and working conditions for rubber tappers, a meager pension system, barriers to educational and health access, water and air pollution and violations of workers’ right to organize. The report is also one of the first examinations of the role that several different security forces operating on the plantation play in violating the rights of workers, their families and communities surrounding the plantation.
Robert Nyahn of the Save My Future Foundation said, “There is time for everything, the time for exploitation and abuse is over; it is now time for Firestone to clean up the ugly and unimaginable past and begin to make fundamental changes that reflect a company committed to contributing to the growth and development of a developing country. With our hands joined together we will no longer accept this kind of evil.”
Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies said, “This groundbreaking report shows that the heaviest load in Firestone’s largest rubber operation is still being born by the women and children of Liberia. After 82 years of exploitation masked by a massive public relations campaign, Firestone must be held accountable for its continued violations of worker rights and abuse of the environment. Liberian workers and future generations need good corporate neighbors. Firestone can and must do better.”
Tim Newman, child labor campaigner at the International Labor Rights Forum said, “This report reveals the widespread abuse of workers’ rights on the Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia. As the first independent and democratically elected union leaders on the plantation negotiate a new contract, it is important that Firestone take the demands of workers and their allies to heart. Eighty two years of exploitation is enough and the time is now for a new day on Firestone’s rubber plantation in Liberia.”
Firestone has operated the world’s largest rubber plantation in Harbel, Liberia since 1926. As the report shows, rubber tappers have a daily production quota they must meet in order to receive their daily wage which is just over $3 a day. As a result of the unreasonably high quota, workers must bring family members to work with them or hire subcontractors using their meager salaries. Additionally, workers must carry two 75-pount buckets of raw latex on sticks on their shoulders and work without protective gear. Workers live in crowded shacks without electricity, running water, indoor latrines.
The report was a follow up to SAMFU’s 2005 report on human rights violations and environmental abuses on the Firestone rubber plantation called “Firestone: The Mark of Modern Slavery.”
UPDATE -- April 9, 2009, AllAfrica Global Media
Greenville — "We organized security throughout the camp. If there was noise in the plantation we would call the person and carry out an investigation," the man known as 'White Flower' tells IPS. "Then the superintendent said they should arrest me and my crew."
The Sinoe Rubber Plantation (SRP) is one of Liberia's largest at over 242 hectares. It was the site of fierce fighting during between Charles Taylor's government forces and opposing militia the brutal civil war.
After the war's end in 2003, former fighters eventually led by Leon Worjlah, the 32-year-old ex-combatant everyone calls White Flower, took control of the lush plantation through a local association called the Citizen's Welfare Committee (CWC).
"Before you can go and buy some rubber from that plantation, you had to pay $100 (U.S.) to the CWC," explains local journalist Patrick Kamor. "Then, besides that, when you are transporting rubber to town, for every twenty bags you had to give them five bags."
"When [White Flower] left people were feeling bad about him Why do people have to pay money before you can operate on the plantation? Why when you transport your own crops do you have to pay every time by dropping bags?"
Both the area's small-time rubber purchasers and the CWC transported the latex to giant commercial buyers Firestone and Liberian Agriculture Company (LAC) in Greenville.
"It was said that the fees [CWC] collected would go to benefit plantation communities, but accusations often flew about misuse of funds by committee members," stated a joint government and United Nations Rubber Plantation Task Force report in September 2007.
The SRP lies thirty kilometres from the coastal town of Greenville, thirty km of rutted dirt road and damaged wooden bridges that are barely navigable during the rainy season. Bordering the mineral-rich forest of Sapo National Park, it is home to the indigenous Wedjah community, and an influx of ex-combatants and civilian families looking for work.
The plantation is not prospering: with a recent drop in global rubber prices and the majority of trees bled dry from overexploitation, the coummunity lacks basic services like clinics, schools and access to clean drinking water. A ton of rubber worth $1,200 in Greenville a year ago collects $282 there today.
"For the past three months we've had a problem with food," says Robert Reeves , a rubber tapper from Gartey Village on the plantation's edge. "We depend on the rubber, and the rubber is not productive again for the entire farm - it has broken down - and we can't survive." He says tappers now climb over four meters up the tall rubber trees to bleed them for latex; exhausting and hazardous work for little gain.
Reeves is building the area's first clinic as a mason at $7 a day for the U.N., now the SRP's largest employer. Many of his neighbours are also enrolled in the U.N.'s Reintegration, Rehabilitation and Recovery (RRR) programme, which has employed over 700 workers so far, clearing brush and maintaining roads.
Says Eric Perry, a U.N. RRR programme officer, "The local community residents were begging for intervention because since 1990 there has not been any social service provisions - there were no schools, no clinics, absolutely nothing."
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government has aggressively looked for companies to invest in Liberia's most valuable resources - rubber, iron ore and timber - but the global economic meltdown in September 2008 has hit the country's concessions particularly hard.
The future of the community may not lie in rubber production at all. Considering the horrible working conditions, the corruption within the industry, and the depletion of the land, this may ultimately be a good thing for the residents of the area. The UK-based charity Landmine Action is setting up an alternative agricultural program for ex-combatants from SRP in the nearby town of Panama, modelled after a successful land reclamation project in Guthrie Rubber Plantation, also supervised by former fighters after the Liberian civil war.
Building a campus of classrooms and housing, the NGO is planning an initial three-month course for over 200 former fighters, teaching a variety of alternative farming able to sustain families for years to come.
James Davies was a former fighter with Charles Taylor's NPFL, and at 36 is a natural leader for many of the workers cementing bricks on the construction site. "I was in the plantation before here. There was a time the government told everybody in the plantation they should leave. So that's why I decided to call a meeting in the plantation, with my brothers, and said, 'I want for all of us to work on something positive.' If you treat people bad, you will make enemies."
Robert Nyahn of the Save My Future Foundation said, “There is time for everything, the time for exploitation and abuse is over; it is now time for Firestone to clean up the ugly and unimaginable past and begin to make fundamental changes that reflect a company committed to contributing to the growth and development of a developing country. With our hands joined together we will no longer accept this kind of evil.”
Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies said, “This groundbreaking report shows that the heaviest load in Firestone’s largest rubber operation is still being born by the women and children of Liberia. After 82 years of exploitation masked by a massive public relations campaign, Firestone must be held accountable for its continued violations of worker rights and abuse of the environment. Liberian workers and future generations need good corporate neighbors. Firestone can and must do better.”
Tim Newman, child labor campaigner at the International Labor Rights Forum said, “This report reveals the widespread abuse of workers’ rights on the Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia. As the first independent and democratically elected union leaders on the plantation negotiate a new contract, it is important that Firestone take the demands of workers and their allies to heart. Eighty two years of exploitation is enough and the time is now for a new day on Firestone’s rubber plantation in Liberia.”
Firestone has operated the world’s largest rubber plantation in Harbel, Liberia since 1926. As the report shows, rubber tappers have a daily production quota they must meet in order to receive their daily wage which is just over $3 a day. As a result of the unreasonably high quota, workers must bring family members to work with them or hire subcontractors using their meager salaries. Additionally, workers must carry two 75-pount buckets of raw latex on sticks on their shoulders and work without protective gear. Workers live in crowded shacks without electricity, running water, indoor latrines.
The report was a follow up to SAMFU’s 2005 report on human rights violations and environmental abuses on the Firestone rubber plantation called “Firestone: The Mark of Modern Slavery.”
UPDATE -- April 9, 2009, AllAfrica Global Media
Greenville — "We organized security throughout the camp. If there was noise in the plantation we would call the person and carry out an investigation," the man known as 'White Flower' tells IPS. "Then the superintendent said they should arrest me and my crew."
The Sinoe Rubber Plantation (SRP) is one of Liberia's largest at over 242 hectares. It was the site of fierce fighting during between Charles Taylor's government forces and opposing militia the brutal civil war.
After the war's end in 2003, former fighters eventually led by Leon Worjlah, the 32-year-old ex-combatant everyone calls White Flower, took control of the lush plantation through a local association called the Citizen's Welfare Committee (CWC).
"Before you can go and buy some rubber from that plantation, you had to pay $100 (U.S.) to the CWC," explains local journalist Patrick Kamor. "Then, besides that, when you are transporting rubber to town, for every twenty bags you had to give them five bags."
"When [White Flower] left people were feeling bad about him Why do people have to pay money before you can operate on the plantation? Why when you transport your own crops do you have to pay every time by dropping bags?"
Both the area's small-time rubber purchasers and the CWC transported the latex to giant commercial buyers Firestone and Liberian Agriculture Company (LAC) in Greenville.
"It was said that the fees [CWC] collected would go to benefit plantation communities, but accusations often flew about misuse of funds by committee members," stated a joint government and United Nations Rubber Plantation Task Force report in September 2007.
The SRP lies thirty kilometres from the coastal town of Greenville, thirty km of rutted dirt road and damaged wooden bridges that are barely navigable during the rainy season. Bordering the mineral-rich forest of Sapo National Park, it is home to the indigenous Wedjah community, and an influx of ex-combatants and civilian families looking for work.
The plantation is not prospering: with a recent drop in global rubber prices and the majority of trees bled dry from overexploitation, the coummunity lacks basic services like clinics, schools and access to clean drinking water. A ton of rubber worth $1,200 in Greenville a year ago collects $282 there today.
"For the past three months we've had a problem with food," says Robert Reeves , a rubber tapper from Gartey Village on the plantation's edge. "We depend on the rubber, and the rubber is not productive again for the entire farm - it has broken down - and we can't survive." He says tappers now climb over four meters up the tall rubber trees to bleed them for latex; exhausting and hazardous work for little gain.
Reeves is building the area's first clinic as a mason at $7 a day for the U.N., now the SRP's largest employer. Many of his neighbours are also enrolled in the U.N.'s Reintegration, Rehabilitation and Recovery (RRR) programme, which has employed over 700 workers so far, clearing brush and maintaining roads.
Says Eric Perry, a U.N. RRR programme officer, "The local community residents were begging for intervention because since 1990 there has not been any social service provisions - there were no schools, no clinics, absolutely nothing."
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government has aggressively looked for companies to invest in Liberia's most valuable resources - rubber, iron ore and timber - but the global economic meltdown in September 2008 has hit the country's concessions particularly hard.
The future of the community may not lie in rubber production at all. Considering the horrible working conditions, the corruption within the industry, and the depletion of the land, this may ultimately be a good thing for the residents of the area. The UK-based charity Landmine Action is setting up an alternative agricultural program for ex-combatants from SRP in the nearby town of Panama, modelled after a successful land reclamation project in Guthrie Rubber Plantation, also supervised by former fighters after the Liberian civil war.
Building a campus of classrooms and housing, the NGO is planning an initial three-month course for over 200 former fighters, teaching a variety of alternative farming able to sustain families for years to come.
James Davies was a former fighter with Charles Taylor's NPFL, and at 36 is a natural leader for many of the workers cementing bricks on the construction site. "I was in the plantation before here. There was a time the government told everybody in the plantation they should leave. So that's why I decided to call a meeting in the plantation, with my brothers, and said, 'I want for all of us to work on something positive.' If you treat people bad, you will make enemies."
Add a Comment
-
Comment by Songweaver TaFariSon on April 10, 2009 at 2:44am -
Alpha Blondy - Peace In Liberia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IrPQru8SNo
About
Give Thanks for Life! JAH RAS TAFARI!
© 2009 Created by Soundjata on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
You need to be a member of World Of Jah to add comments!
Join this social network