Sugarcane producers took to the streets to protest the non-payment of pensions, promised in September 2020 by the PRM government and personally by President Abinader, as well as the persistence of forced labor in the sugar industry, particularly in the American company Central Romana.
On June 18, the Sugar Cane Workers Union (UTC) demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Labor to demand the payment of pensions and call on Minister Luis De Camps to act against violations of labor legislation. “(Central Romana) violates the fundamental rights of sugarcane workers, because in an abusive, provocative, humiliating and scandalous manner, it has forced 129 former sugarcane producers from the bateyes of Guazuma, Nigua, Batey 80, Batey 108, Higüeyana and others, to return to their homes, which they acquired as payment after spending more than 50 years working for the sugar industry. The company is confiscating their homes through fraudulent maneuvers and outside the law “, indicates the union organization in a press release submitted to the ministry and read to the press.
They reported that the sugar company pays between 80,000 and 90,000 pesos in benefits to Haitian workers who have worked as sugarcane cutters for more than 50 years. “(Central Romana) continues to impose forced labor practices on sugarcane plantation workers and, in this sense, we ask the Ministry of Labor to mediate within its functions so that (the company) returns the houses and pays fair work allowances and eliminates forced labor.”they added. The UTC announced that if it did not obtain positive responses from the minister, it would address the country’s courts and international justice through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
On July 9, dozens of UTC sugarcane workers gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy headquarters to reiterate their demand for pension payments and to demand that, given the continued labor violations in Central Romana, none of the sanctions established by that country’s customs system be lifted in 2022, which limit imports of sugar and other products from the U.S. company Central Romana. They highlighted the violation of freedom of association and the expulsion of sugarcane workers from their homes for demanding respect for their labor rights. They also provided a list of 567 retired sugarcane workers who do not receive benefits or pensions, in addition to not having access to medical care, insurance and any type of social protection.
On September 26, 2020, President Abinader promised to pay more than a thousand new pensions to Haitian sugarcane workers who had worked for decades in the country’s public and private sugar mills. Not only did the government fail to deliver on this promise, it also stopped paying pensions to hundreds of sugarcane farmers who were already receiving them, introducing new requirements for collecting pensions, such as having a valid ID card.
Retired sugarcane producers and their families have denounced that the Central Electoral Commission has also maneuvered in recent months in complicity with the General Directorate of Retirement and Pensions to declare sugarcane producers who were receiving pensions dead and force them to process certificates of life, an arbitrary discriminatory and anti-worker measure aimed at reducing the number of sugarcane producers who receive their pensions. Against young sugarcane workers who are busy cutting and uprooting the cane, the regime has deployed brutal repression, such as that of May 26 at the Central Sugar Consortium, or the judicial frame-up against the Dominican worker of Haitian origin Miti Senvil, persecuted by Central Romana and arbitrarily detained since March of this year in El Seibo. All these events are a reflection of the racist and savage anti-worker policy of the right-wing regime led by President Luis Abinader.
Socialist Workers’ Movement of the Dominican Republic
July 11, 2024
