Taxpayer funds save Congo plantation
paying workers $1/day
by Chris Arsenault ROME, Nov 12 (Thomson
Reuters Foundation)
Development funds from European governments
have helped to rescue a Canadian company that pays workers as little
as $1 per day to toil on some of Africa's largest palm oil
plantations in the impoverished Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Government-backed investment funds from Britain, France and Spain,
designed to help poor countries develop, stepped in to buy 60 percent
of Toronto-listed Feronia Inc for about $35 million in two separate
investments in 2012 and 2013. The investments came after shareholders
fled the Cayman Islands-registered company as its share price fell
700 percent.
Officials at the government-backed funds say this is an
investment in African agriculture over the long-term, creating jobs
in one of the world's poorest and most unstable countries, and they
expect private investors to eventually return. But rights groups
question whether the investment in the DRC is a suitable use of
public funds, with the cash propping up a loss-making company shunned
by private investors that has done little to help workers, paying
them about half the minimum wage.
"Workers are living in
crumbling homes, in severe disrepair. There is malnutrition in the
communities near the plantations," Jean Francois Mombia, a
campaigner with RIAO-RDC, a non-governmental organisation that works
with labourers at Feronia's operations, told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation.
Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with GRAIN, a Spain-based land
rights organisation following the DRC, raised similar concerns.
"(Feronia) has not brought improved working conditions on the
plantations or improved living conditions for the local communities
or even (brought) decent returns for the people whose money was used
for the investment," Kuyek said. Scrutiny of Feronia follows a
wave of foreign investment in African farmland that has raised
ethical questions about "land grabs" and led to unrest on
some projects.
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