7 August 2008
Maputo — The anger shown by Labour Minister Helena Taipo against her own negligent officials, and against abusive employers in the northern province of Cabo Delgado was largely sparked off by a man in a wheelchair, who has been fighting for over a year for compensation after a major industrial accident.
According to a report in Thursday's issue of the daily paper "Noticias", Juma Bissai, who worked in the timber processing company Wood Export, in the district of Mueda, lost both his legs in an accident on 19 June 2007.
By the time Taipo visited the factory, which is owned by an Israeli citizen, he had still received no compensation. Bissai said he had gone to the provincial capital, Pemba, to seek redress from the Provincial Labour Directorate. He stayed there for three months - but nobody from the directorate would receive him.
When President Armando Guebuza visited Cabo Delgado earlier this year, Bissai traveled to the rally he addressed in the town of Macomia, and managed to speak to the President.
And when Taipo arrived at the gates of Wood Export, on 29 July, she found Bissai in his wheelchair blocking her passage. But she had good news for him - Guebuza had taken his case seriously and ordered her to investigate. She admitted that her own officials in Cabo Delgado were not operating at even a minimally acceptable level.
Taipo found that, two weeks before her visit, anther worker, Dula Rashid, had lost his life at Wood Export, crushed beneath a tree trunk. The employer refused to allow his car to be used to take the body to the morgue, and so Rashid's colleagues had to hire another vehicle. The management then refused to allow the workers time off to attend Rashid's funeral.
The furious Taipo told the management that if they wanted to continue operating, they would have to clean up their act at once, and improve their safety conditions. "The company must change its stance, because when you entered this market you knew perfectly well what our legislation was", she said.
Taipo's visit to the largest Cabo Delgado timber company, Miti, in Mocimboa da Praia, proved to be very short. At the sawmill she was workers without boots, without face masks, without helmets, without the slightest protection. They told her they were paid, not by the month, but by the week. The wage of 300 meticais (12.5 US dollars) a week is well below the statutory minimum industrial wage of 1,975 meticais a month.
Although the company had been informed in advance of Taipo's visit, the managers were not there to greet her. Some of them turned up shortly after her 12 minute visit ended - only to find that Taipo had ordered the company closed down until all the irregularities were corrected.
"Noticias" later spoke to Faruk Jamal, the Mozambican who, in theory, owns Miti. But he does not seem to have much authority over his own company. For he told the paper he was in partnership with a group of Chinese citizens, to whom he had given responsibility for running the sawmill and exporting the wood.
"They're my partners, but they don't accept guidelines, even those concerning the workers' wages", said Jamal. But he recognised that, in the final analysis, he bears responsibility for the poor conditions at the sawmill.
At the Pemba Beach Hotel, one of the flagships of Cabo Delgado tourism, owned by Rani Resorts, a company set up by Saudi businessman Adel Aujan, Taipo found naked discrimination between the Mozambican and foreign staff employed there.
Workers doing the same jobs were paid different wages depending on their nationality, and even on which part of Mozambique they came from. The Mozambicans and foreigners were given different food, and only the foreign workers were entitled to holiday pay.
For Taipo, the key problem was that the Provincial Labour Directorate did not function. When she visited its premises she found they were filthy, with more political party leaflets than state documents in evidence, and with equipment that ought to have been replaced a decade ago.
She went into the bathroom and returned with a mug that had once been white, but which was now a mixture of yellow, brown and green, thanks to the accumulation of months of grime. "This mug says it all", remarked Taipo. "It gives us a picture of this place, of the lethargy which rules in this directorate, and the shame that we should all feel for having such a dysfunctional labour directorate as that in Cabo Delgado".
Taipo found that the directorate had paid almost no attention to professional training. There was an investment fund of over eight million meticais (about 330,000 US dollars) to build a professional training centre. It was unfinished because the directorate was waiting for an electrician to come from Maputo - although there are certainly electricians in Pemba. Meanwhile other material to be used on the building was deteriorating.
The directorate had also received funds to publicise the new labour law, which took effect in late 2007. But in none of the districts she visited did Taipo find any sign that such publicity had occurred.
"This campaign was financed. Would you like me to ask where the money for this campaign went, and what happened to the funds for professional training?", she asked. "Would you be able to answer?"
Taipo said she had found government officials lamenting that companies were breaking the laws, when it was precisely those officials who ought to be enforcing the laws. "It is the government that should be the guarantor of labour and social justice for citizens", she declared.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
