Sao Paulo, Feb 10 (EFE).- The Brazilian authorities rescued 24 Venezuelan refugees in the country, some of them caring for newborns just a few days old, in conditions analogous to slavery, official sources reported this Friday .
The group of migrants was exploited “in activities for the construction of accommodation and warehouses, in Rio do Sul,” a municipality in the state of Santa Catarina, the Brazilian Ministry of Labor said in a statement.
The coordinator of the rescue operation, Joel Darcie, indicated that the Venezuelans worked in degrading conditions and “in the most absolute informality.”
“They installed them in improvised rooms, without beds or bathrooms. They lived in an improvised place for a week, while they worked on construction,” the auditor-fiscal described.
Darcie recounted that in one of those rooms they found “two four-day-old babies, twin sons of one of the workers.”
The Venezuelans resided in the cities of Chapecó and Itapiranga and found out about the job offer from a publication on a social network, “directed exclusively” for citizens of that nationality.
The offer included a monthly salary of up to 3,000 reais (about $570) for “Venezuelan refugees in Brazil,” as well as room and board provided by the company.
The Brazilian authorities transferred the workers to hotels in the region and forced the company to pay their labor rights, which reached a value of 240,000 reais (45,700 dollars).
According to official data, last year Brazil rescued 2,575 workers in slavery-like conditions. EFE
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