Farmers ask to stop deportation of Haitians

San Juan de la Maguana. 

If the mass deportations of undocumented Haitians continue, the collection of the current bean planting will collapse, because these workers represent 95% of the workforce.

The warning is made by the leaders of the main associations of farmers and millers, who ask for a truce to the General Directorate of Migration and the Ministry of Defense, until the process of collection, transport, and unloading, from the plots to the centers of gathering.

The approach is made by Alejandro Ramírez Bidó, Eladio Arnaud Santana, Stelin Montilla, Pablo de la Rosa, Henry Rodríguez and Agustín Báez, main leaders of agricultural associations, in a meeting with Colonel Ramón Belén Pichardo, commander of the Third Army Brigade from the Dominican Republic.

They also denounced that the military penetrates the farms in the early morning, breaks the doors, seizes the Haitians, who, they say, strip money, cell phones and other belongings they own, an action they describe as violating human rights.

“The beans are the crop that demands more labor, because 90% is made using artisanal methods that date back more than 50 years, and as a result of the development of the country and the subsidies granted by the Government, the Dominican workers disappeared so that you demand that President Danilo Medina Sánchez instruct you to stop repatriations,” they said.

In that sense, they stated that Haitian labor is essential for the agricultural sector, as well as for construction.