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Mozambique: Golden Fields Workers Return Home
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
22 November 2007
Posted to the web 23 November 2007
Maputo
The director of labour in the central province of Manica, Mouzinho Carlos, has apologised for his failure to alert the Labour Ministry in Maputo to the fact that workers from Manica were recruited irregularly by a company growing roses for export that was not even registered.
About 100 workers from Manica and the neighbouring province of Tete were recruited to work at Golden Fields, in Moamba, some 60 kilometres northwest of Maputo. The company's owners include former foreign minister Leonardo Simao and his wife Josefina.
The workers say they were promised decent accommodation, but found that they had to live in tents made of sacking, without any bathrooms, let alone kitchens. They had to take their drinking water straight from the Incomati river, and were given no protective clothing.
The Labour Ministry only learnt what was going on when a crew from the private television station STV filmed the appalling conditions under which the workers were living. The Ministry ordered the suspension of all activities at Golden Fields, and gave the company a list of conditions to be met before it can resume operations.
Annoyed at the hostile media coverage, Golden Fields threw the workers off the premises without even enough money for their bus fares home. It was the Labour Ministry that paid for their return to Manica and Tete. The Ministry has promised to ensure that Golden Fields pays the workers the compensation to which they are entitled.
According to a report in the Beira daily "Diario de Mocambique", Mouzinho Carlos met with the 42 workers from Manica and admitted he had not contacted the Ministry about their recruitment - but he had never imagined that the workers might be mistreated in the way that they were. "I think that nobody with any sense could do what happened in Moamba", he said - a stinging rebuke to a former minister.
He stressed that the government had nothing to do with the abuses the workers had suffered, "and that's why the Labour Ministry created the conditions to evacuate you, for your protection.
You've come home, with all the difficulties there are here, but it's better than staying in the conditions you endured in Moamba".
What had happened at Golden Fields was "not normal in Mozambique", he added, particularly as it involved "figures who had the moral obligation to treat their fellow citizens decently".
He added that he had believed that when the workers set off for Moamba, they had signed work contracts, they had travel insurance, and proper accommodation was awaiting them - none of which was true.
A spokesman for the Manica workers, Joiro Saimone, told "Diario de Mocambique" they had all previously worked for the now defunct company Vilmar Roses, in the Manica town of Messica, and were therefore experienced in growing roses for export in greenhouses.
After the bankruptcy of Vilmar, this group of workers were all unemployed, and thought it a godsend when a former minister offered them jobs building greenhouses and growing roses. The conditions promised by Josefina Simao were highly attractive, said Saimone, "but she never wanted to honour her promises".
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In the time they were in Moamba, the workers built seven greenhouses, and the company planned a further 12. "Anyone who looked at it closely could see that the work we did was very good", said Saimone. "We worked with love to make that company advance, but because of the inhuman treatment we suffered, we became demoralised".
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| Copyright © 2007 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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