On the evening of Saturday March 19th, the Anti Narcotics Unit was on a special operation on the Southern Highway when they stopped a bus from Maya King Farms with 39 Central Americans on board - comprising 27 adults and 12 minors. The group included 8 Hondurans, 1 Salvadoran and 18 Guatemalans and they said they were orange pickers at Maya King. But the police report that none of them had any identity documents. That's a red flag - and the presence of 12 minors, aged 6 to 17 years raised another flag, pointing to child labour. Now, the children aged 13 and under were on the bus with their parents, but that still left five 14 to 17 year olds who said they were working on the farm as unaccompanied minors and getting paid one dollar and fifty cents per bag of oranges that they picked. The other children say they also helped their parents pick oranges.
In the words of the report from the anti Trafficking In Persons Unit, quote, "there are apparent labour violations to say the least. These children should not be allowed to do labour-intensive work at a farm where heavy equipment such as trucks and tractors operate." End quote.
But, despite all this, on Saturday night after the detention of the 39 - multiple senior government officials including - we are reliably told - ministers - were calling to have the police release the persons from custody and send them on their way - even though multiple red flags for human trafficking and child labour were waving.
Agriculture Minister Jose Mai was one of the ministers making calls, and today he defended his actions. In so doing, he took on the role of a kind of super cop or prosecutor saying he just wanted to make sure "the right thing" was done - though it's not quite clear what that is:
Hon. Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"Our Calls were made to ensure that we're doing the right things. Taking into consideration that we're losing fruits right now, the calls were made for us to do the right thing, do the proper investigation, not to release anybody who was guilty of wrong doings but to do proper investigation before we accuse anybody. Many times we accuse people without the proper evidence so our call was to ensure that due diligence is done and whoever is liable will have to be liable. But if somebody is just being targeted for whatever reasons, that is unfortunate, and we don't want that to be the case. It's not the case and we don't want that to be the case."
