Professional organizations of agricultural workers in the face of the National Union of Agricultural Producers' Associations UniAgroProtect and National Farmers’ Federation called on farmers to come to protests, which will be organized by the Civil Platform “Demnitate si Adevar” [DA, “Dignity and Justice”] on September 6.

 

During Tuesday’s news conference at Infotag, UniAgroProtect Chairman Alexandru Slusari said that the combination of two crises: the financial, due to US$1 billion stealing from banks, and the draught created to agrarians an extremely difficult situation.

 

“The weakening of the Moldovan leu led to growth of prices on import, which is necessary to agrarians. While the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) policy on reserving raised the rates on credits, making these unavailable to agriculture workers”, he said.

 

According to Slusari, the harvest of the majority of cultures will be 60% lower than in 2014 because of extremely dry weather.

 

“In such a difficult situation the Government does not move a finger to help workers of the branch to cope with challenges they face. Moreover, the Agricultural Subsidy Fund is 100 million lei less than last year. Currently, the state has not yet paid the subsidy arrears for 2014, while in what concerns the payments for 2015, nobody knows anything at all”, he said.

 

He said that in current catastrophic situation in agriculture, the profile organizations of agrarians decided on August 26 to come on September 6 to a protest in front of the Government.

 

“We are urging all the agrarians to come to this protest and to demonstrate that workers of agriculture are not going to tolerate anymore the state policy in relation to the branch. We will have to protest non-stop to attract the Government’s attention to problems in agriculture”, Slusari said, recommending Moldovan authorities to learn from governments of Poland and Czechia in terms of supporting agrarians in conditions of the crisis in connection to the Russian embargo.

 

Heads of associations pointed at the fact that they still do not have an elaborated action plan, which is more likely to appear only by the mid-September.

 

Chairman of the National Farmers’ Federation Vasile Mirzenco pointed the press’ attention to the fact that the authorities are pretending they are listening to agrarians, but never do what the latter demand.

 

“I ceased to believe that we will be able to achieve something and solve any problems with the current administration”, Mirzenco said, calling on the media outlets to correctly explain agrarians’ position at the September 6 protest.

 

The Agroinform Association did not join the DA platform, thus it does not make any appeals to its 4500 members on coming to the protest, preserving the hope that agreements can be reached within the dialog with the authorities. However, its representative expressed regret that out of all the things the authorities promised to solve at farmers’ demand, nothing has been done so far.

 

Head of the Moldova-Fruct Association Iurie Fala said that agrarians should participate in protests.

 

“We are not members of the DA, but we are calling on our members to participate in the September 6 protest to express to authorities our outrage in connection to such a state policy in agriculture”, Fala said.