Jungle workers living as slaves—priest

Press, 9 May 1983, Page 10

Jungle workers living as slaves —priest

NZPA Brasilia Some 600 labourers hired to clear a huge slab of eastern Amazonian jungle for the Brazilian Volkswagen company are living as slaves, a Catholic priest asserted yesterday. Father Ricardo Rezende Figueira, of the church’s pastoral commission for the land, said. after visiting Volkswagen Do Brasil’s huge Vale de Rio Cristaliho property — 141,000 hectares — that unwilling labourers were forced to remain in the jungle, with many beaten and others killafctand thrown into the Those attempting to es-

cape were shot by “pistoleros,” he said, and women submitted to sexual violations. The labourers have been hired to clear 56,090 hectares of jungle to make way for pastureland for over 100,000 head of cattle. In a document to be sent to both the Brazilian authorities and the West German head office of Volkswagen, Father Rezende said that the labourers were reduced to a state of slavery because they were paid too little to cover their debts towards the company. The cost of the trip to the jungle plus the exorbitant

prices of food and staples sold in the company stores, meant that the labourers were constantly in debt to Volkwagen, he alleged. The document — which includes statements by several of the labourers, Father Rezende and the mayorVf a nearby village — also cites the case of seven labourers sold by an employment agency to another company. Last February, it charges, the “pistoleros” on the estate tortured a labourer and raped his wife while another worker, who became was tied to and left to die. V'

Another man allegedly disd of malaria when the company refused to provide medical help despite promises upon employment that all medical assistance would be funded by the company. Volkswagen, which recruits the labourers through an agency, pays 20,000 cruzeiros (about ?NZ7S) for every five hectares cleared. The wage does not cover food costs, the report said, as a sack of rice is sold at 610,000 cruzeiros on the estate against 6000 in shops. ■ AU foodstuffs cost at least double their normal price in the company stpres, said Father Rezende.