PHOTO: Why some workers not pleased with housing units?
By Garmah Never Lomo, garmahlomo@gmail.com
HARBEL, MARGIBI, Liberia= Firestone Rubber Plantation workers living in Camp 3 in the Harbel Regeant City area have decried the deplorable housing conditions the company has subjected them to living in, but the Management of the company has spoken of the opposite.
A tour of some of the camps by www.newspublictrust.com Reporter shows that the kind of housing units being inhabited by mainly laborer workers fall far too below what Firestone committed itself to building for its workers.
But the Firestone management has denied some of the claims made in a written response to questions sent by this news outlet:
NEWS PUBLIC TRUST: Some employees of Firestone particularly from the PPD department, whom you declared unfit to work, have alleged that you put them down without pay, rice, pension, or payoff. My question is by what means were they declared unfit?
FIRESTONE MANAGEMENT: Firestone Liberia, through the National Social Security and Welfare Corporation (NASSCORP), provides benefits for workers who are determined to be unable to perform their job duties due to a work-related injury or medical condition. NASSCORP, through their established claim procedures, determines eligibility for these benefits.
Further complaints by workers
The affected workers said the tightness of the houses they now live in makes it difficult for them to even to even turn around in their own houses; not to mention storing anything in it besides a bed or mattress.
They complained further that their houses are so small that they don’t enter them with ease.
One of the rooms shown to this Reporter
This contravenes the Section 8.5 of the Firestone Concession Agreement which provides that Firestone Liberia shall continue to construct improved housing standards as set forth in Appendix IV.
One worker, who spoke on anonymity, said their dwelling can be likened to caves of ancient times and that they are being treated like sub-humans. He added that the treatment being meted to them can be equated to slavery.
In the midst of their pain, he noted, their government continues to pay blind eye to their plight.
When contacted, the President of the Firestone Workers Union of Liberia Ridennick Bongorlee, acknowledged the sub substandard housing units workers were living in which he equally referred to as mere caves.
He has also questioned the government’s position in the face of the human rights abuses its people are suffering at the hands of the company.
Mr. Bongorlee lamented that as the people’s rights are being violated the government often sits idle – doing nothing to remedy the situation.
The workers union head noted that the affected employees had previously been transferred from far more spacious flats where they enjoyed electricity but suddenly found themselves taken to the current deplorable units.
This he described as clear violation of the concession agreement and gross violation of the people’s rights.
He said the plight of fellow workers at Camp 3 in Regeant City has been advanced to the level of their parent organization, the Agriculture Agro Processing Industrial Workers Union of Liberia (AAWUL) which has so far failed to intervene.