Global IssuesPOVERTY-MAURITIUS: Labouring Through a Class Four Cyclone
Thousands of workers in the textile and manufacturing industry in Mauritius have been forced into unemployment and poverty within the last few months, as factories announced multiple rounds of job cuts due to the global financial crisis.
The country’s economy mainly depends on exports of textiles to Europe and the United States as well as on tourism.
'How will I pay my mortgage loan and my utility bills? How will I send my children to school? How will I buy food?' asks Anita Goodye, a mother of three who lost her job at clothing manufacturer Shibani Knitwear in January, together with 500 other workers.
Thousands of textile and manufacturing workers on the island find themselves in a similar situation to Goodye. They struggle to make ends meet after jobs were cut and several factories closed down because of lack of orders. According to finance minister Ramakrishna Sithanen, about 5,000 jobs, or seven percent of the textile and manufacturing workforce, have been lost in the first quarter of 2009 alone.
'Mauritius is riding through a class four cyclone, and the longer its duration, the heavier will be the consequences,' he declared on national television, using the cyclone as a metaphor for the turbulent financial times the island state is facing.
Far away seems the economic miracle of the 1990s that provided jobs and money to many Mauritians, allowed for the expansion of the textile, manufacturing and tourism industries and served as a model for economic success to other African governments.
No orders
'We live in uncertainty because our factories, big and small, are producing and exporting less. If the crisis persists, many more workers will lose their jobs,' predicts Eric Mangar, manager of Movement for Food Security, a local NGO working against poverty and hunger.
Sacked workers, mostly women, demonstrated on the streets in March in front of Government House in Port-Louis. They demanded jobs, but, above all, their unpaid salary for the past months.
Several factories, including Shibani Knitwear, Chentex Garments have not paid their workers since November 2008, when the economic downturn started to have an impact in Mauritius. Women are most affected by the financial crisis because 60 percent of the island’s textile workers are female.
'Our factories are receiving much less orders for textiles,' comments François Woo, director of the Compagnie Mauricienne de Textile, employing 5,000 people. According to the Central Statistics Office, exports declined by 10.5 percent between 2007 and 2008. He fears the financial crisis will completely destroy Mauritius’ textile industry and with it tens of thousands of jobs.
The tourism industry, which counted one million visitors in 2007, has also taken a huge dip. Tourist arrivals have declined by 20 percent since January, according to the Bank of Mauritius. This has had a negative bearing on the island’s hospitality industry, which includes restaurants, handcraft shops as well as transportation and inland travel.
Bonny Travel and Tours manager Pratap Dave Udhin says revenue has declined by 30 to 40 percent within the last months, forcing his company to sell some of its vehicles. 'We are no longer able to hire tourist guides. Our drivers have to do the job,' he explained.
At the Caudan Waterfront in the capital Port-Louis, craft shop owners also complain about declining sales. 'If tourists continue to buy less, we won’t survive,' lamented a saleswoman who did not want to be named.
Movement for Food Security and other NGOs are now trying to launch income-generating projects, such as small-scale poultry farming, to help the rising numbers of unemployed stay out of poverty. 'We have engaged some of them in [poultry farming]. We teach agriculture to others, so that they can cultivate their own vegetables in their backyard,' Mangar explained.
Others try to get jobs as hawkers, stonemasons, day labour or cleaners to make ends meet.
Rising unemployment
This is not surprising, says Ashok Subron, spokesperson for CSG-Solidarité, a federation of trade unions: 'The population is becoming poorer because of a combination of increased costs of living and insufficient salaries. Workers in the export-oriented enterprises only earn about 7,900 Rupees a month [$240].'
He says that many of those who were saved from job cuts had their salaries frozen for an undefined period of time.
To improve the workers’ situation, CSG-Solidarité is asking businesses that enjoyed 40 to 50 percent profit margins in the past three years to pay a wealth tax to compensate laid-off workers, since Mauritius has no national unemployment fund. The amount of such a wealth tax is yet to be specified.
The Mauritian government has also put in place financial mechanisms to help recover the country’s economy. Twice in the last six months - in December 2008 and again in May 2009 - government offered two-year incentive packages worth $782 million to save jobs. Through the incentive packages, government will finance half of a companies’ investment programme, while the company has to bring up 25 percent and get financial backing for the remaining 25 percent from a bank.
In his budget speech on May 24, Sithanen explained the strategy: 'We are not doling out money but investing responsibly to save the island’s economy and protect the revenue of thousands of families who otherwise will have to face the challenges of unemployment.'
Through its National Empowerment Foundation, government also provides training for retrenched textile workers in other business sectors, such as agriculture, fishing as well as information and communication technologies. And as a gesture of solidarity with the unemployed and the poor, government announced it will reduce the salaries of the president and ministers.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service