The Rubber Republic

We had been hearing a lot about the Firestone rubber plantation since arriving in Liberia, so we decided to go and see it for ourselves.

The plantation was founded in 1926, and is the largest single natural rubber operation in the world. It is situated in Margibi County, around one and a half hour’s drive from Monrovia. The journey there was a mini adventure in itself. It took us along winding roads and rolling hills, past the new Liberian army training camps and the ‘ambush curve’ (a sharp bend in the road where rebel groups used to hide during the war to ambush unsuspecting vehicles).

It was only when we reached the plantation that I fully comprehended its size. The plantation is organized into 45 ‘divisions’. Each worker is allocated to a division, where they work and live with their families. There is a quasi bus system transporting workers from one place to another. In particular, under the agreement between Firestone and the Liberian government, the company has the social obligation to provide schooling and healthcare for workers and their dependents, so the buses help to transport workers to these services. At the entrance to the plantation is a bustling marketplace, the centre of life in the plantation.

Inside the Rubber Republic

However, it would be mistaken to think that life as a worker in Firestone is an easy one. The little red cups hanging on the rubber trees tell the story of the daily life of a rubber tapper. A tapper gets up in the early hours of the morning and makes a small cut in the rubber tree, and the white latex is left to run down the tree for about five hours to collect in the red cups. The tapper repeats the same procedure for around 500 to 550 trees each day. The rubber collected from all the little cups are poured into large buckets, and handed in at a nearby collection station. A tapper can collect up to 6 buckets of liquid latex per day. The latex is then exported to the United States mainly for processing into tires. The tedious and labour-intensive nature of the work means that tappers often draft in their family members to help with the collection process. There have been various protests from international groups against the use of child labour in the plantation, and concerns that the management pays little attention to the general welfare of women living in the plantations. Living conditions for many of the workers are also unsatisfactory – as we drove around the plantation, we saw crowded huts lacking electricity and other basic services.

Left: Rubber trees with red collection cups

Right: Tapper making cut on rubber tree

Following the amendments made to the concession agreement between Firestone and the Liberian government earlier this year, there seems to have been some improvement in the workers’ welfare. However, given that the company has already been in the country for over 80 years, one cannot help but feel that they could have done more for the people living in their Rubber Republic and for the people of Liberia.