Thai berry pickers earn money in Finnish Lapland
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A group of 40 Thais arrived in Savukoski in the north of Finland on Thursday evening to spend the coming two months picking wild blueberries to earn extra money.
A total of about 92 of the pickers are coming to Savukoski for about two months, when blueberries are ripe in the local forests. Most of the pickers are rice farmers at home who do not speak English. Saowanee Akosuma, who works in an office, serves as an interpreter.
Finnish berry farmers have been recruiting foreign pickers to bring in the harvest for some years now. The greatest numbers of foreign pickers of cultivated berries come from Russia and Estonia.
Foreigners with just a tourist visa are allowed to pick wild berries and sell them. They do not need to sign an official labour contract, and can stay for up to three months on their visas. They pick the berries themselves, and sell them to a berry processing company. Wild blueberries fetch about one euro per kilo, cloudberries bring in EUR 4.50 a kilo, and lingonberries EUR 0.80 a kilo.
The employers are required to offer housing. However, some pickers prefer to avoid the expense and sleep in a tent.
Riitan Herkku, a food processing company in Mustasaari, has bought a vacant local school and day-care centre as a place of lodging for the villagers. However, there have been some complaints about the purchase.
"Unfortunately some take a negative view of this. We do buy berries from local people as well, but we need more. There is huge demand for blueberries around the world", says Jan-Erik Gustafsson of Riitan Herkku.
The group's guide Heikki Kilpelä has scouted the area for good picking grounds, and in the upcoming days, he will help the pickers get better acquainted with the local map, and help them move around the forest more independently, in their own groups.
In a forest, Sunthorn Champeechot is busy picking.
"This is very important for me, because I earn so well. It is fairly hard work, but I can manage", he says through an interpreter.
Most of the Thai pickers who are working in Finland this year have been doing the same thing in Sweden in previous years. They pay their own travel, accommodation, and rent for the cars that they use. Many have borrowed money for the trip. They hope to earn more in Finland, because the number of pickers is smaller here than in Sweden.
The interpreter says that in spite of the expenses, they manage to earn quite a bit of money. The pickers say that whereas their normal monthly salaries are about 7,000 baht - just under EUR 140, they expect to earn the equivalent of more than 100,000 baht.
The local unemployment rate in Savukoski is quite high: in June it stood at 20%, which was an improvement on the average figure for the early part of the year, which was 24.9%.
However, officials insist that there is plenty of room for both local and foreign berry-pickers in the community.
"It is good that the berries get picked. The unemployed also pick plenty of berries, but the berry season is so short that it will not eliminate unemployment", says Lauri Ylisaari, the municipal trade promoter.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 5.8.2005 - TODAY |
 Thai berry pickers earn money in Finnish Lapland |
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