Mobile restrooms, lunch facilities for farm workers

Steps are being taken to address the harsh and unsanitary conditions to which dozens of this country’s agriculture workers, including women, have been subjected for decades, ministers declared Friday as they launched mobile lunch rooms and sanitary facilities for state-owned farms.

In a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Mia Mottley and Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir, officials from the National Erosion Control and Aquifer Recharge Programme presented the facilities to the Barbados Agriculture Management Company Limited.

Despite widespread public assumptions that providing rest facilities are routine, Barbadian farm workers have from time immemorial been expected to take breaks, eat lunch and even relieve themselves while exposed to the elements.

For the last 12 years, Kathy-Ann Pinder grew to love farming as she worked at the BAMC’s Mount Pleasant, St Philip farm. But she acknowledged that work was done under very uncomfortable conditions.

Pinder said: “In those years, we tried our best to handle the fact that it was an outdoor job and we had no choice but to cope with what we had – the great outdoors. We would place our bags with our lunch and other personal items on a folding chair we took to work to sit on and in some cases, on empty sprayed grounds.

“The uncomfortable feeling of having the rain fall and nowhere to shelter except under an umbrella, a raincoat or for some large plastic bags cut down on one side to make a covering that worked out okay, except if there was a heavy downpour of rain where we became soaked or as bajans would say ‘dripping wet’ which made us uncomfortable.

“When nature called, it was really a nature’s call. We had no choice but to use the open elements which in itself can be dangerous having to go off into the nearby bush to ease yourself and more so for the female workers.”

The new mobile facilities are outfitted with a lunchroom and bathroom with special provisions for women’s sanitary needs. The solar-powered structures are also fitted with charging ports for mobile devices.

During her 10-minute remarks, Prime Minister Mottley revealed that agriculture workers were the first group she visited under the Rubbing Shoulders programme while in opposition.

She noted that despite the work of former leaders like Sir Grantley Adams, Errol Barrow and Tom Adams in providing Holidays With Pay legislation, the National Insurance Scheme, maternity leave, injury benefits, sickness benefits and unemployment benefits, some classes of workers were seemingly left behind.

The Prime Minister said: “Nothing much more can make me happier than to know that we are correcting a clear injustice that has been faced by our agricultural workers for too long, but in particular the women who work in agriculture, who have had to face the indignity of having to work all day, every day without the benefit of being able to maintain their dignity in circumstances that all of us would agree is the most natural thing to expect. (KS)