Mozambique: Maragra strike in third week – AIM report

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Mozambique: Maragra strike in third week – AIM report

11:15 CAT | 22 Sep 2019

Photo: O País

About 500 workers at the Maragra sugar mill in Manhica district, about 90 kilometres north of Maputo, have been on strike for the past 19 days, demanding higher wages, reports the independent television station STV.

The workers want a 30 per cent pay rise, but the company is only prepared to offer 20 per cent, and that is conditional on the strikers returning to work, and the mill producing 350,000 tonnes of sugar by December.

There have been repeated labour disputes at Maragra. In one of the most serious, in August, strikers set 45 hectares of sugar cane on fire.

The National Sugar Workers Union (SINTIA) had tried to mediate between the workers and the company, without success. The union has blamed this on the intransigence of the employer.

Most of the strikers work in the mill, not on the plantation, and they are demanding to be paid as industrial, not field workers. The statutory minimum wage for industrial workers is 7,000 meticais (about 114 US dollars) a month, while for agricultural workers it is only 4,390 meticais a month.

The company is refusing the workers’ demands on the grounds of Maragra’s financial difficulties. On Thursday the company met with representatives of the strikers, but there was no breakthrough and the strike is continuing.

The factory is closed, and, according to the secretary of the Maragra trade union committee, Alexandre Julio, the strikers will not go back to work until their demands have been met. Julio told reporters the company has taken refuge in its supposed financial difficulties “and it continues saying that it has nothing more to give us”.

Maragra is 90 per cent owned by the South African company Illovo, which is South Africa’s largest sugar producer. Illovo is a wholly owned subsidiary of Associated British Foods (ABF).

Source: AIM