Large areas of the Liberian countryside where former fighters control rubber plantations are ”lawless” and are putting plantation workers and their families at risk, according to a United Nations report.
Also fingered as a concern are private security guards hired by the rubber companies who ”arrest” and ”detain” illegal rubber tappers without reference to the Liberian National Police (LNP).
”In several plantations there is an absence of state authority and the rule of law. There is a recurring problem on the plantations concerning illegal detention and arrest by private security officers without the knowledge of the LNP,” said the report by the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).
The report said the non-existence of state authorities and the lack of respect for the rule of law ”places the fundamental rights of plantation residents at risk”.
Whole families live on the plantations, and many are employed to tap the trees by the companies that own the plantations.
The eight month assessment, which started in June last year and was published this week, uncovered that the presence of former fighters from Liberia’s civil war continued to be a problem in five out of seven of the country’s rubber plantations.
The five plantations are: Cavalla, Firestone, Guthrie, Liberia Agriculture Company (LAC) and Sinoe with the largest, Firestone, alone covering an area of 404 685 hectares.
Guthrie plantation in the north-west and Cavalla and Sinoe in the south-east of the country were particularly plagued by the gangs of mostly young men, said the report, who are illegally tapping the trees of latex rubber and selling it on to merchants for profit.
In Sinoe plantation, where there is not a single police officer, UNMIL found that one former rebel fighter from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) ran a gang of some 40 followers who acted with impunity.
”In Sinoe Rubber Plantation, LNP officers are not present and courts do not operate. The ex-LURD general and self-proclaimed general manager of Sinoe Rubber Plantation, Mr Paulson Gartey said he is both policeman and judge on the plantation. He further described himself as ‘God”’, the report said.
Liberia’s 14 years of civil war shocked the world in its brutality, where young fighters, many clad in wigs and ladies dresses terrorised Liberians sending hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives across the country’s borders.
Under UN tutelage, Liberia is on the road to reconstruction, but the task ahead is vast. Economic reconstruction will be further hampered as many of the most potentially productive age-group in society — the 20 to 30 year olds — cannot even write their own names.
Liberia remains under UN trade sanctions after former president Charles Taylor was implicated in backing rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone and rubber is the only export that generates revenues for the government.
In February, newly-installed President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf who is working to get the sanctions lifted said that the presence of the former fighters had made Guthrie plantation in particular one of Liberia’s problem hot-spots.
An Irin correspondent who visited Guthrie plantation last year found traders travelling each day in pick-up trucks from the capital 45km away to purchase latex from the former fighters.
”This is a real business, we normally sell a bag of 50 kilos of rubber for $6,50,” said Amos Tamba, the deputy head of the former fighters in Guthrie plantation at the time. ”Sometimes each of us earns about $60-150 per week just from sale,” he added.
Senior civil servants and doctors typically earn a salary of less than $20 per month in Liberia and about 80% of people are unemployed.
Also in the report, UNMIL noted the poor working and living conditions for the plantation workers and their families. Liberia’s Labour Minister Samuel Kofi Woods told reporters on Wednesday that the government had given a three-month ultimatum to the operators of the largest plantation, Firestone, to improve workers conditions. – Irin