CDM does not acknowledge claim

October 23, 2008 4:38 AM

In a reaction on the verdict in the case instituted by three Cuban dockworkers, Commissioner Eugène Rhuggenaath (PAR) said before TeleCuracao yesterday that the Curacao Dry-dock Company (CDM) does not acknowledge the 80 million dollar claim that an American judge imposed last Monday.

Besides, CDM doesn’t have that kind of money.

They demanded damages due to CDM’s exploitation in the period that the three were working for the company. Their lawyers accused the CDM of supporting the Fidel Castro regime. Cubans working for the dry-dock company were part of an agreement to pay off a debt of the dry-dock company in Havana to CDM. However, the Cuban dockworkers made much less than the local minimum wage, worked 16 hours a day, sometimes 45 consecutive days, and lived in awful circumstances in barracks, where, as they say themselves, they were forced to watch Castro’s propaganda. Their passports were taken by a family-member of Castro, who functioned as supervisor.

CDM was not legally represented during the trial in the US. The dry-dock company refuses to give an official comment. Rhuggenaath said that the verdict must first be studied.
A local judge will have to go into the workability of the verdict. At that time, CDM has vainly tried to have the trial take place in Curacao. After the CDM has broken off relations with an American lawyers’ firm due to ‘irreconcilable differences’, the company didn’t consult another one, due to the biased legal system.

(Source: National newspaper Amigoe)

22 October, 2008