BRASILIA – The Brazilian government announced an accord with businessmen in the sugar industry to provide decent working conditions for the nation’s sugarcane cutters following criticism leveled by various human-rights organizations.

“This will help tone down criticism of Brazilian ethanol,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Thursday, referring to objections expressed by some European countries about biofuels produced here from sugarcane.

At a ceremony presided over by Lula, members of the government and company representatives signed a document in which a series of agreements were signed favoring laborers in the sector, who in certain areas of the country are paid $1.20 an hour for cutting, stripping and stacking 12 tons of sugarcane a day.

The document is not binding, however, and merely represents a “commitment” on the part of the companies to provide laborers with better conditions, while the government commits to improving its oversight of all cane cutters in the country.

The pact does not establish minimum wages nor formal obligations of any kind, but has the support of 303 out of the 403 firms in the industry operating in this country, according to a top aide to the president, Luiz Dulci.

The president of the Unica sugar industry trade association, Marcos Jank, said that the pact also includes companies’ commitment to “collaborate” in the technical training of thousands of laborers who in recent years have lost their jobs to the mechanization underway in the cane-cutting process.

It also sets safety and hygiene standards, as well as other regulations to guarantee workers’ health, since in non-mechanized companies they are exposed to gases from burning leaves, unavoidable where harvesting is done manually.

Working conditions in Brazil’s sugarcane fields were slammed last year in an Amnesty International report that described them as “degrading” and asked for urgent measures to improve the lot of sugarcane cutters. EFE