Due to the lack of local workers, people from India, Nepal, Pakistan and Moldova have been coming in droves to Serbia to pick raspberries this season.
The wage for picking raspberries will depend on the price of this year’s raspberries, but some plantation owners in western Serbia are already offering 4,000 to 8,000 dinars per day.
Many of the raspberry plantation owners have been employing the same workers for years, while others are forced to look for them through advertisements or through employment agencies that also offer workforce from India, Nepal, Pakistan, Moldova and other countries.
A raspberry grower from Sevojno is looking for 6 workers and offers a daily wage of 5,000 dinars, with paid meals and coffee breaks.
“We found four workers through an ad. They are hard to find. Some don’t want to work and some have been working for the same plantation owners for years already. We are beginners in this business and it is a problem for us to find labor,” he says.
According to him, the people who are willing to pick raspberries are mostly retired or unemployed and they come from all over Serbia. The daily wage is 4,000 dinars for jobs such as pruning and cutting. The e daily wage depends on supply and demand, he says, and “plantation owners can pay that amount, since a good sales price is expected this year, not less than 500 dinars per kilo of raspberries”.
Adam Radović, who owns about 70 hectares of land with planted raspberries in Stupčevići near Arilje and has been engaged in growing this fruit for 15 years, says that he paid 3,000 dinars per day to his workers last season, while this year, he still does not how much the daily wage will be. At the moment, he pays 300 dinars an hour for preparatory work in raspberry picking, plus free food.
(Danas, 05.05.2022)
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