Varinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, May 2

A vast majority of over 36,000 Punjabi farm labourers in Latina and adjoining southern provinces in Italy is not only being exploited financially and physically, but also forced to live under stony control of gangsters or members of farm mafia.

The workers pick vegetables for up to 13-14 hours a day for over six days a week in vast fields of lettuce, zucchini, radish, eggplant and tomato. Ironically, while the workers pluck vegetables and fruits for up to 14 hours a day for six-seven days a week, the Italian law stipulates that farm workers cannot work more than six hours a day at the equivalent of $12 per hour.

A majority of them had reached Italy by shelling out huge amounts ranging between $20,000-25,000 to the middlemen and travel agents having their powerful network in Punjab and Europe.

Increasing drug addiction among them has only made their lives from bad to worst.

It was for the first time in Italy’s history that Sikh farm workers organised a farm strike, wherein more than 4,500 farm workers took out a march in 2016 in provincial capital of Latina amid threats from their bosses and members of the mafia. Farm workers were helped in organising the strike by farm labourer-turned-community activist Gurmukh Singh and a local social activist, Marco Omizzolo.

More than a dozen Punjabi workers have reportedly committed suicide during the past four years in the fertile and lush green fields of Latina — known as an agriculture hotspot of Europe.

“Another big problem for migrant Sikhs or Punjabi farm workers is that farm owners don’t pay them their dues in almost 30 per cent of the cases. The migrant farm labour crisis is more in Italy’s southern states. Calling family to Italy is a Herculean task for migrant labourers as the process takes a long 8-10 years,” said Paramjit Singh, a schoolteacher hailing from Hoshiarpur, who had spent around 14 years in Italy before deciding to shift back to Punjab along with his family.

Pardeep Singh, another farm worker from Nawanshahr, said hard-working Punjabi migrant labourers accomplished most of the farm jobs ranging from harvesting to planting, but they were hardly prospering due to the existing ‘exploitative system’. “They are often maltreated if they speak against the slavery-like system or if they seek restoration of their rights or enhancing of their wages,” he said.

Gurmukh Singh’s small grocery shop in Borgo Hermada has virtually turned into a small “community information centre” where Sikh farm workers come for seeking help in understanding the contracts or other related documentation. Farm workers say the biggest problem in the implementation of labour laws is the lack of the will power of the local authorities and shortage of staff.