Last week’s protest by aggrieved workers of the Salala Rubber Corporation turns violence here, with arson attack and looting of company’s assets.
By Ramsey N. Singbeh, Jr. in Margibi
Margibi County, Friday, June 28, 2024- Protesting workers, mainly tappers of the Salala Rubber Corporation or SRC, have resulted to violence against the company, characterized by an arson attack and looting with the General Manager of the plantation, Ajith Kumar (an Indian national) narrowly escaping unharmed.
Mr. Kumar, who was trembling as a result of excessive fear, urinated on himself when aggrieved workers held him hostage briefly, demanding that he leave the company’s premises because of alleged bad leadership.
The striking workers forcefully entered the company’s main factory in Weala on Thursday, 27 June, setting administrative offices, including the home of Plantation Manager Sangeeth Sathyan and his assigned vehicle, ablaze.
However, fellow Indian businessman Upjit Singh Sacdeva, a.k.a. Jetty, who operates a bigger rubber plantation in the county, swiftly intervened to rescue Mr. Kumar from the angry protestors.
The strike action took place in Weala at the SRC’s main factory, where the general manager and other top company executives work and live.
Mr. Jetty quickly sent state security assigned at the Jetty Rubber LLC in Weala to rescue the SRC General Manager Ijith Kumar, who was held hostage, as angry protestors burnt the company’s plantation manager Sangeeth Sathyan’s house and assigned vehicle while looting rice and setting the company’s administrative offices at the blaze.
There has been no casualty report from the violence that began early Thursday in the company’s premises.
The angry protestors were also seen looting bags of rice from the administrative building of the company.
Documents and other important items belonging to the company were also destroyed in the fire before other company workers tried to quench the flames.
The tappers, totaling about five hundred, started a go-slow last week that lasted for about five days before yesterday’s violence. The workers’ union leadership told them that management allegedly refused to pay them for five days lost on the job.
This information triggered the aggrieved workers, intensifying the go-slow with violence. The protestors had earlier told the workers’ union leadership headed by Mary Boimah that they would return to work only because management paid them for the five days they laid down tools.
When the workers’ union engaged SRC Management about the tappers’ thirteen-count grievances, management promised to address about six counts. At this point, the union went back to the workers to inform them about what management had decided to do in addressing their issues.
In their counts against the company, the aggrieved workers recently alleged bad labor practices by the company that have spanned about three years, including poor housing and health facilities, management’s alleged refusal to replace tapping knives in time when they are damaged, lack of transportation for workers living outside the plantation, failure to provide a jeep for ambulance purpose, and management’s decision to assign each tapper approximately 1,700 trees a day, instead of 500 to 600 trees daily, among other complaints.
Sources from the company told the NEW DAWN that the SRC General Manager, Ijith Kumar, has been uncooperative and has always turned down suggestions from other senior staff meant to solve some of the prevailing concerns raised by the aggrieved workers.
Wallace Pennoh, a staff in the human resource department, is linked to instigating the violence by trading news between General Manager Kumar and the workforce, allegedly ill-advising the GM not to take the tappers’ concerns seriously.
He is accused of passing information from Liberian employees to expatriates, especially Mr. Kumar, seeking favor at the expense of his colleagues in the administration.
The SRC General Manager is also said to have allegedly met with the General Managers of the Liberia Agriculture Company (LAC) and Firestone Liberia to seek their advice on the crisis.
Meanwhile, the Liberia National Police has made several arrests for the violence, pending investigation. Editing by Jonathan Browne
