About 500
workers at a textile factory in Swaziland needed medical treatment after
inhaling poisonous chemicals, according to the kingdom’s trade union
federation.
The Trade
Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) said the incident happened at the Taiwanese-owned
Tex-Ray factory in Manzini, the kingdom’s main commercial city on Friday (5
September 2014).
According to
a TUCOSWA press
statement doors at
the factory were locked making it difficult for workers to escape the fumes. It
said, ‘close to 500 workers collapsed and had to be treated in various medical
institutions’.
Mduduzi C.
Gina, TUCOSWA First Deputy Secretary General, said, ‘It is more disturbing to
learn that the management of the company locked the exit points of the factory
shell when workers wanted to escape from inhaling the lethal substance.’
Gina said
the incident happened at the same time that TUCOSWA had announced it wanted to
address Tex-Ray workers on workers’ rights and the lack of political freedom in
Swaziland.
Last week,
police prevented TUCOSWA and the Swaziland United Democratic Front
(SUDF) from holding
a prayer meeting outside Tex-Ray. Swazi media reported at the time that 1,500 workers had gathered.
The workers
are concerned for their jobs after the United States dropped Swaziland from the Africa Growth
Opportunities Act (AGOA) which allowed the kingdom to export goods at preferential rates. The US
made the move because Swaziland, which is ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch, has a poor record on political and workers’
rights.
Media in Swaziland have
predicted that as many as 20,000 jobs in the
kingdom’s textile industry could be lost as a result of the withdrawal of AGOA
benefits that comes into force on 1 January 2015.
There are about 25 Taiwanese-owned
factories operating in Swaziland, mostly textile and garment manufacturers,
paying salaries described by workers as close to slave wages. There have been
numerous strikes
by workers trying to get decent wages, where the pay is so
poor that many women workers are unable to feed themselves properly and have to
resort to prostitution.
Wages in textile factories in Swaziland
are so low that companies in South Africa threatened
to move their factories to the kingdom to avoid
paying the minimum wage in that country.
A report in 2010 stated that employees
in Matsanjeni typically earned E160 a month and were forced to
turn to prostitution to survive.
Some women textile workers reported
they earned E5.50 per hour (about 85 US cents) and had to
live six to a room and three to a bed to get by. They tried to share food as
the cheapest meal for one person costs E10 and a piece of fruit costs E1.
But, wages in Swaziland were still too
high, according to Mason Ma, director and vice president of Tex-Ray. He told
reporters in 2010 that recent increases had pushed ‘wage levels higher than in
some Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia’.
In August 2010, Lutfo
Dlamini, who was then Swazi Minister of Foreign
Affairs and International Co-operation, told
Taiwan journalists that all profits made in the
textile factories for Taiwan-owned companies could be taken out of the kingdom.
He said that this made Swaziland a better place to set up factories than
anywhere else in Africa.
And, the then Taiwanese ambassador to
Swaziland Peter Tsai told reporters a distinguishing feature of Swaziland in
terms of investment ‘is that it allows full repatriation of profits and
dividends of enterprises operating in the country’.
Dlamini said in Swaziland, ‘We believe
in this country. You invest your money. You make profits and you are able to
take the profits away.’
See also
MINISTER RAIDS TEXTILE FACTORY
SWAZI TEXTILE PAY STRIKE ILLEGAL
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