Virus highlights plight of migrant farm hands

PARIS－From Romania, Poland, Morocco and Thailand, thousands of people flock to Western Europe each year to help farmers harvest precious crops, and are often paid low wages for long, backbreaking days of work.

The migrant laborers' often poor work conditions are a point of recurring controversy, but the coronavirus outbreak has thrown their plight into stark relief with the added risk of contagion in overcrowded, unsanitary living quarters.

Several outbreak clusters were reported among workers－with 174 infections on a farm in Bavaria in Germany; 250 on another in Aragon, Spain; and 170 in Provence, France since the European harvesting season began.

Italy had to send riot police to a council estate in Mondragone, north of Naples, after a cluster of more than 100 coronavirus cases among Bulgarian workers living there sparked tensions with locals.

With harvests set to continue until October, "it is very likely that we will see new outbreaks associated with seasonal workers", warned Fernando Simon, chief epidemiologist at the Spanish Ministry of Health.

But Europe's economy, devastated by the virus, cannot afford to lose these workers, many from the east of the continent and from Africa.

France's agriculture minister Julien Denormandie said last week the government would not be "dogmatic" at this stage about its plans to regularize migrant labor, much reduced by virus-busting limits imposed by Europe on population movement.

As continentwide lockdowns persisted in May, farmers from several regions of Italy chartered planes to bring workers from Romania and Morocco.

Calls for better treatment

But while farm laborers were hailed along with other essential workers for keeping locked-down citizens fed during the epidemic, this has not always translated into better treatment.

In the Andalusian village of Lepe in Spain, dozens of African migrant workers have been camped outside the town hall since the shacks they were living in, without water or electricity, burnt down two weeks ago.

Despite government efforts, uncoordinated as they are, many farmers have battled to find the hands they need.

In Germany, only 40,000 of the required 300,000 foreign workers could be recruited this season, meaning part of the fresh produce harvest will remain on trees or in the ground.

One option: going local.

The British government launched a campaign dubbed "Pick for Britain" encouraging locals to replace some of the 70,000 foreign farm hands needed for the summer harvest.

Agencies Via Xinhua