More on Ematum workers on strike again – AIM report

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More on Ematum workers on strike again – AIM report

9:01 CAT | 01 Apr 2017

File photo

Workers of the Mozambique Tuna Company (EMATUM) went on strike on Thursday and demonstrated outside the Maputo fishing port, protesting that the company has not paid them their January, February and March wages.

They are also demanding their New Year bonus (known as “the thirteenth month”, since it is equivalent to an extra month’s wages).

The spokesperson for the strikers, Carlos Sandaca, told the independent television station STV that Ematum is also failing to send social security contributions to the National Social Security Institute (INSS). The money is deducted from the workers’ wages, but Sandaca said he went to the INSS to check and found that Ematum had paid nothing for the past ten months.

The last time Ematum workers went on strike over unpaid wages was in October. “We’re tired of having to make a noise just to receive our wages”, said Sandaca. “If they can’t pay us, then they should just write a document cancelling our contracts, then each of us can look for a new job”.

Because of the failure of the company to pay their wages, many of the workers find themselves in great difficulties, unable to pay their rent, or school expenses for their children. One striker, Domingos Ndaruza, claimed some of his colleagues had been evicted from their homes because they had not paid the rent.

Sandaca said the workers had tried to speak to the management, but without success. One worker, Rodolfo Candido, said We don’t know the company chairperson, and we’ve never seen him. We want to speak to him. We want explanations about our situation. I have to ask for loans in order to feed my family. Life has been very difficult for us”.

The Ematum chairperson is Antonio do Rosario, a former official of the State Information and Security Service (SISE), who was appointed chairperson, not only of Ematum, but also of Proindicus and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), the other two quasi-public companies, which between them obtained in 2013 and 2014 over two billion dollars in loans from European banks (mainly Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia), illicitly guaranteed by the former Mozambican government, headed by the then President Armando Guebuza in violation of the budget law and of the Mozambican Constitution.

STV attempted to speak to the Ematum management, but when its reporters went to the company’s head office, it found that the only person there was a security guard. He told them “today nobody’s appeared at the company. Every day the directors come to work. But today, since a strike was announced, they haven’t come. We security guards were told to call in the riot police, if the workers came and made a scene here”.

Of the two billion dollars lent to the three companies, 850 million was for Ematum. No list of assets or services bought with this money has ever been published, and certainly the cost of the 24 fishing vessels and six patrol boats built for Ematum at a French shipyard amounts to nowhere near 850 million dollars.

Back in December 2013, the then Fisheries Minister, Vitor Borges, answering questions in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, claimed that the rest of the money was for such items as radars, onshore installations, training and licences, but he gave no breakdown of this expenditure.

Source: AIM