Central Romana said in a written response to The Associated Press that it received the news about the import ban with “great astonishment.”“In recent decades we have invested millions of dollars to improve the working and living conditions of our employees in agricultural areas, guaranteeing decent wages and increased benefits, training and education workshops, as well as training in human rights and duties of our workers,” it said.The announcement was cheered by activists who have long decried the treatment of tens of thousands of workers who live and work on sprawling sugarcane fields, many of them Haitian migrants or descendants of them.“We’ve been asking for improvements for decades.”The Associated Press last year visited several sugarcane fields owned by Central Romana where workers complained about a lack of wages, being forced to live in cramped housing that lacked water and restrictive rules including not being allowed to grow a garden to feed their families since transportation to the nearest grocery store miles away was too costly.Sugarcane workers also have organized several protests this year to demand permanent residencies after working for decades in the Dominican Republic, which is now cracking down on Haitian migrants under Abinader in a move that has drawn heavy international criticism.A group of U.S. legislators who visited the country issued a statement in July saying workers lived in settlements, or bateyes, “under harsh and substandard conditions” and that some “described being directed to stay quiet and not speak to anyone about their conditions before our visit.”The congressional delegation also noted that Central Romana had started to make improvements, but that “despite this, a culture of fear appears to permeate the industry, where company supervisors, armed guards, and officials from an unrepresentative union monitor workers both in the fields and in the bateyes.”"