The president of ACOS — Associação de Agricultores do Sul considered this Thursday as “fundamental” for national agriculture the immigrant workforce, which must be legalized and have decent conditions, but for that control and supervision is necessary.
????????This labor force, we have said it and we repeat it, is essential in our country today.???????? If it weren’t for so much foreign labor, for so many immigrants, we would not be able to collect the olives, fruits or vegetables that we need today, therefore it is necessary”, highlights Rui Garrido.
However, “this workforce has to be legalized,” the president of ACOS told the Portuguese news agency.
Rui Garrido commented to the Lusa agency on the operation of the Judicial Police, on Wednesday, in Baixo Alentejo, which allowed the arrest of 35 suspects allegedly belonging to a criminal network that hired foreign workers for agriculture in Baixo Alentejo.
PJ detains 35 people on suspicion of human trafficking in a network that exploited hundreds of immigrants in Alentejo
A police source told Lusa on Wednesday that this network was made up of foreigners, specifically Romanian families, and some Portuguese who supported them.
“The several dozen victims of Romanian, Moldovan, Moroccan, Pakistani and Senegalese nationalities were hired for farms in Beja, Cuba and Ferreira do Alentejo, among other places,” the source added.
According to the president of ACOS, an institution based in Beja, “farmer associations have nothing to do with this, nor farmers in general”, that is, with these human trafficking networks.
It seems to me very good that controls are carried out, and increasingly strict controls, because this workforce has to come and we, even because of the need that we have [dela], we are part of the problem, but we are here to help and collaborate to solve this problem. Now, there has to be a check,” he said.
The fact that it cannot continue to exist is, “as sometimes you hear it there”, situations of “people who are deceived, who see living in perfectly miserable conditions”, frisou, rescuing, contudo, that this control, carried out only by farmers It is very difficult.
Using his own case as an example, Rui Garrido reported that, as is normal in the region, where farmers hire companies that have labor, he too, who now made a plantation, hired a company with Romanian workers.
“My concern is to know if everything is legal. They say yes, they have the documents, they have insurance, etc., but many times [as empresas] people change and we don’t know it,” he said.
That “cannot be controlled” by the farmer, “one day everything is fine, the next day I don’t know if there is one or the other that is no longer well, it is impossible,” he insisted, arguing that there should be more oversight by competent authorities on the ground????????
To avoid cases like this, Rui Garrido also said that he takes precautions and only turns to companies that give him “credibility”, but “there must be control and there must be dignity in the conditions in which these people are hired.”
“Are [ACOS] the first to recognize it, has already had meetings with some chambers and we do not want to be left out of the problem. We want to be within the problem, because we need labor, legal and in decent conditions, ”he reiterated.
Source: Observadora
