Over 1,800 locals from Ditrau village, in Romania’s Harghita county, have signed a petition in which they ask the owners of a local bread factory to stop hiring foreign workers. In the petition, which was submitted to the local city hall, the locals also asked the factory’s owners to present the documents that prove the two Sri Lankan workers working at the factory are certified as bakers.

“They (the factory owners – e.n.) should not hire foreign workers as the unemployment rate in the commune is over 2%, and they should thus contribute to preventing local youth from leaving the country,” the petition mentions, according to Mediafax.

The locals also demand apologies from the entrepreneurs who own the bakery for damaging the community’s reputation. “We ask the employer to, first of all, respect the peace, self-respect, public interest, religious cult and traditions of the inhabitants in Ditrau,” the petition says.

The demands also include the creation of a workers’ union in the village and compensations for yearly vacations and extra hours for which the bakery’s employees haven’t been paid in recent years.

The case of the two Sri Lankans working at the bakery in Ditrau was widely mediatized after the locals revolted against the company that hired them and said they didn’t want immigrants in their village.

Following pressure from the locals, the company moved the two foreign workers from their host in Ditrau to the nearby town of Gheorghieni. However, the employer has kept the two Sri Lankans at the factory. Moreover, a third worker from Sri Lanka arrived in Romania this week to work at the factory in Ditrau, in the pastry department, according to Hotnews.ro.

editor@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Agerpres / Gina Stefan)