Six months after the images of the horrible working conditions Vietnamese workers were forced to live in at the construction site of the Chinese company Linglong in Zrenjanin, N1 now reports about the mistreatment of Serbian workers in the same company.
“We have had no water here since 8 a.m. this morning, and we are all thirsty because it’s 36 degrees Celsius outside. Is this normal? Look at 10 centimetres of dust on the ground. Are we in a factory or a forced labour camp?” asks one worker.
Technically, this is the largest construction site in Serbia, and formally the people hired as cleaners are neither cleaners nor do they have a place on the site.
N1: As far as we understand, you have signed a contract for a production worker which means that when the factory is finished you would be responsible for operating some of the machines. However, you were hired to work as a construction worker.
Worker: Yes, as a construction worker. It says in the contract that we have to do everything that is done in and around the Linglong site. We improvise, we clean the floors with rags lying around, we don’t have brooms, we don’t have tools, we don’t have gloves. They make us get rid of the rubbish that has been accumulating here for a year while the Vietnamese and the Chinese workers have lunch. They asked us to literally sort the rubbish, to separate the plastic from the food waste.”
About 700 Serbian workers have been given jobs at the company. In addition to cleaning, they also do physical labour. “For two years now, we have been asking the Chinese managers of the company to provide us with proper shoes, equipment and helmets,” the worker says.
(Nova, 29.05.2022)
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