New Democrat (Monrovia)
27 May 2011
Police have conformed the violence in which officers of their Emergency Response Unit (ERU) allegedly shot and killed one protester, but said they have no further details.
Report reaching this paper Thursday evening from the scene said the ERU shooting was on the Cavalla Rubber Corporation, where workers were protesting for 4 years salary arrears.
“…All shops and stores have been shut down and people are running all over the place. As I speak to you, workers are taking the body of the dead man to City Hall to decide what they will do next,” Trokon Hoto, a Pleebo resident, told this paper Thursday in a telephone interview.
The dead man, Gartor Doe, and a group of workers, were demanding 4 years of back-pay owed them by SIFCA, the company that runs the plantation.
There has been rising tension on the plantation since the government signed a 50-year, US$74m concession agreement with the company on 21 January 21, 2011. The concession deal, however, encountered stiff opposition from Rep. Bhofal Chambers of Maryland County’s Pleebo-Sodoken District. Mr. Chambers has alleged that the company lacks strong financial backing to operate the plantation in his constituency.
A recent impasse ensued between the Executive Mansion and Chambers over the monetary value of this investment, thus, prompting hundreds of Marylanders to stage a mass protest march against the operation of SIFCA and CRC in the county.
The CRC is mainly owned by Societe Internationale de Plantation d’Heveas (SIPH), a French-based company that operates natural rubber plantations in Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Liberia.
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