Africa-Press – South-Sudan. Bakery workers have accused owners of gross exploitation and lack provision of safety gears to protect against harm during work. The Bakery Workers’Trade Union of Central Equatoria State (CES)raised the concerns during the Union’s General Assembly meeting attended by the state Minister of Labour yesterday.
While addressing media yesterday,Deng Malual Athian, the chairperson of Bakery Workers’ Union, said, “There is serious exploitation of workers by foreigners who owned Bakeries in this country.”
Athian said there were about 700 workers workingin 113 foreign bakeries with less pay and long hours of work meanwhile others lack protective gears, exposing them toa lots of harms.
“Our work always starts at night and ends in the morning or sometime starts in the morning and ends in the evening, sometime people even work all days in the week,our work is a very hard work that exposed people to a lot of dangers but many workers are less paid,” he said.
He revealed that many of them contracted diseases and others became deformed while at work with no support from anybody either the union or owners of the bakeries rendering them vulnerable.
“Now if I tell you that many people became disable others are affect by tuberculosis(TB) which is the most common disease that is affecting many, others also became blind because of the fire,” he lamented.
“We are searching for a way forward to treat these people but we lack finances.If I say now the bakery union is not standing with us, they usually tell us that we are casual workers to receive pay and go,” he said.
“Bakery workers everywhere in South Sudan are facing a lot of hardships and diseases that need to be treated and there is no one standing with them to support them” he added.
He revealed that in Central Equatoria state 17 Bakery workerswere affected by TB and under treatment in various hospitals. “There are also other three we are yet to know diseases they have” Deng added.
“In Malakal someone was pushed into fire and the whole of his face got burn and he is now blind and I called for compensation of that persons and up to now they have not call me” he explained.
Tong Tong, one of the workers said that many bakery owners in the country do not provide protective gears to their workers or risk allowances. He also stated that many bakeries were paid less money to workers who worked throughout the night and sometime during the day. Daniel Deu Deng called on the government to intervene and protect its citizens from all forms of exploitation from foreign nationals.
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