Legal status for migrant workers on Dominican Republic banana farms

By Peter Gaynor, Fairtrade Ireland

The Dominican Republic is the second biggest producing country for Fairtrade certified bananas after Colombia and nearly 50% of what they produce is sold on Fairtrade International terms. Banana farm sizes vary from tiny ones of about three hectares up to very big ones of 100s of hectares. By far the most important market for Fairtrade International is the UK, where nearly 50% of all the Fairtrade certified bananas in the world are sold. Virtually all of the Fairtrade certified bananas sold in both Sweden and Ireland are from the Dominican Republic. Following many years of campaigning by Fairtrade International and other organisations, a government-led regularisation programme was launched last year and now it is estimated that 74% of the workforce have legal status.

Nearly 300,000 people have applied for the regularisation of their situation since the process began in June 2014. About 90% of these applications have now been formally accepted and the paperwork for issuing passports or identity cards is in train. In the plantation sector about 97% of Haitian workers have been registered.

“It has been extremely important for the producers and workers in the Dominican Republic to hear from the people in the banana markets and be able to show the good progress being made on regularising migrants’ work status,” said Marike De Pena, chair of the Latin American Fairtrade Organisation, the CLAC.

Regularisation for migrant workers is contributing towards the progress of the Dominican Republic’s stance on migrant workers and to greater transparency in the international banana supply chain.

Read the full article here.