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| Rose Sieh |
Rose Sieh, 26, is currently working for Indonesian palm company, Golden Veroleum, with plantation in Zoloken, one of four Towns of Grand Kru County in Liberia.
Rose is one of two female Tractor operators with Golden Veroleum’s plantation in Grand Kru County.
“I do this every working day — Monday to Saturday: Waking up from bed at two thirty and riding workers to their assignment points in the fields from four thirty,” She Says
Why did this 26-year-old pick out driving of Tractor as a duty among several others jobs available at Golden Veroleum Liberia?
“To get daily bread for me and my five-year-old son, which is the paramount reason,” she responds.”
“The second reason is, to prove that a lady can do what a man can do. You know, most people think operating a Tractor is a man’s job.”
Rose, a single mother, and a high school graduate from the Richardson Baptist High School in Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County in 2011, joined GVL in 2014.
“I was taught driving at GVL in 2014,” she recalls.
A member of the Grebo ethnic group, Rose says she experiences no intimidation by her male colleagues or her unit’s supervisor on her sex.
“Since I joined GVL, no man has harassed or threatened me over the job because I am a lady or a woman,” she notes.
Rose experiences no discomfort from the job, not even from being forced out of a nerve-soothing and energy-replenishing rest at an early 2:00 am, she swears.
“I don’t feel any strange way from the work, except when I’m experiencing a natural sickness like Malaria,” she says.
Golden Veroleum’s salary and incentives to its employees assigned to operating the company’s Tractors causes a no-discomfort feeling, says Rose.
“I’m given two hundred and twelve United States dollars and a fifty-kilogram bag of imported parboiled rice,” she reveals.
The salary enables her pay her rent (US$10) for a one-bed room she occupies in Geneken, a community near GVL Field (plantation) where many of the junior employees are currently based due to its close proximity to the plantation.
Other incentives are Housing Benefit (US$20 per month) and Education Benefit for workers’ children.
A product from the union of Isaac Sieh and Martha Sieh, company’s Tractor operator Rose Sieh is given only one day by the company to rest.
