Residents in Romanian village rise against Sri Lankan workers at local bread factory

The residents of Ditrau, a village in the central-north Romanian region, are outraged that a local bread factory has hired two Sri Lankan workers. The villagers have asked the local authorities to organize a referendum for stopping what they call the “immigrant inflow”, Digi24.ro reported.

Meanwhile, the bread factory’s owners say they had to bring foreign workers because they can’t find employees locally.

The residents in Ditrau have created a Facebook group “Migráns mentes ditrot akarunk” (We want Ditrau without migrants) that has already reached 2,500 users, to protest against the presence of foreign workers in their village. The group includes hateful posts targeting the two workers and the bakery’s owner.

On Wednesday afternoon, a group of 200 villagers gathered at the local church and went to the City Hall to discuss the matter. The local authorities decided to organize a popular assembly on Saturday.

The locals are afraid that the two workers from Sri Lanka will bring more foreign workers, putting the community in danger. The local priest Biro Karoly explained that the people’s fears stem from an older conflict, from 1986, between the locals and the Roma community, in which a man lost his life. “Our request is to get us back the security in which we have lived so far, so that we are no longer afraid of what will happen. We are not afraid of the two, but of the fact that our safety is affected,” the priest said, according to Digi24.ro.

Meanwhile, the bread factory’s owner and several employers of the factory defended the two foreign workers saying that they are hardworking. They also said the two men came to work in Ditrau to support the families they left behind, similarly to Romanians who went to work in Western Europe, which is why the local community should be more tolerant.

“We also worked abroad and they accepted us, so we have to accept them now,” a bakery worker said.

Piumal and Amahinda are 22 and 49, respectively, and were employed with legal forms, through a recruitment firm, at the largest bread factory in the Gheorgheni region, according to Agerpres. The owners of the factory in Ditrău say they wanted to hire local labor force, both from Harghita and from other counties, but they were not successful, which is why they decided to look for bakers outside the country.