Textile workers on strike
28/09/2007
The country’s minister for trade and industry, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, told the Financial Times today that the country was achieving economic progress. Economic growth (7%), industrial growth (7.5%) and export growth (an impressive 35%), are all ahead of target.
The minister accepted, however, that the government needed to do more to translate this growth into higher incomes, more jobs, lower inflation and improved services.
Working families, including in the textile sector, have complained that inflation has pushed the price of basic goods—cooking oil, dairy products and so on—up by as much as 60% this year. At the same time as struggling to cope with rising food prices, people in villages have had to put up with frequent water shortages.
This is what provoked this week’s industrial unrest, with 27,000 textile workers declaring an open-ended strike.
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