GUATEMALA CITY – The majority of Guatemala’s textile and food-processing plants are exploiting their female workers, according to a study presented here Thursday by the London-based Doctors of the World aid organization.

The study was carried out between 2006 and 2009 among 530 female workers at maquiladoras, or textile mills, and agro-food-processing plants in the southwestern provinces of Chimaltenango and Sacatepequez, Pilar Giraux, who has headed up the DOW mission in Guatemala since 2005, told reporters.

These factories, which import materials and equipment duty-free and target most of their production for export, exploit and discriminate against their female workforce, taking advantage of their low educational levels, according to the study.

“While these factories are considered drivers of development, the jobs they offer are still unstable and poorly paid. Job discrimination, unhealthy working conditions, psychological and sexual harassment, insults and physical abuse, wrongful dismissals, long working hours and non-payment of overtime are common practice,” the report said.

Giraux added that only 56 percent of female workers have health insurance, though all of them are paying for coverage through deductions from their paychecks.

These “workers are suffering the weight of exploitation and are regularly threatened with dismissal if they try to defend their rights,” she said.

The minimum wage for employees in the maquiladora and food-processing industries is just 51.75 quetzales ($6.46) per day, less than Guatemala’s daily minimum salary of 56 quetzales ($7).

At the textile plants, 65 percent of women are paid less than 1,500 quetzales ($187.50) per month, while at the food-processing plants 70.5 percent of the workers receive less than 1,000 quetzales ($125) monthly, Giraux said.

Those amounts are far below the cost of the average basket for meeting a family’s needs in Guatemala, estimated at roughly 3,600 quetzales per month.

At the food-processing plants, a total of 34 percent of the women interviewed were minors and 56.2 percent were indigenous, compared with 4 percent and 41 percent, respectively, at the textile factories.

Only a third of the women working in these industries can read and write, the study revealed.

According to the study, seven of every 10 women employed at the food-processing plants and more than half the female workers at the textile factories are single. Many of them are mothers, “which increases their dependence on having a job,” the study found.

At the processing plants, the women who pack fruits and vegetables for export work in cold-storage rooms “with no safety conditions or protection,” Aurelie Leroyer, coordinator of DOW’s field program in Guatemala, said.

The female textile workers, meanwhile, work without masks and protective gloves and spend the entire day inhaling textile-treating chemicals, the study revealed.

It added that nearly nine of ten women interviewed for the study have suffered some form of psychological or physical abuse, yet they endure the mistreatment for fear of losing their job.

These female workers have come to Doctors of the World for illnesses such as headaches, urinary pain, depression, intestinal disorders, vitamin deficiency and illnesses due to lack of sleep, stress and nervousness, according to the study.

A total of 180 maquiladoras are currently registered in Guatemala; in 2002, the Guatemalan Clothing and Textile Industry Commission estimated that these textile mills provided employment to between 75,000 and 100,000 people, most of them women.

Doctors of the World says on its Web site that it is part of the Medicins du Monde network, an international aid organization that provides medical care and gives a voice to vulnerable people all over the world. EFE