Mozambique’s Minister of the Sea, Inland Waters and Fisheries, Agostinho Mondlane, has played down last week’s strike at the Mozambique Tuna Company (EMATUM), on the grounds that EMATUM is far from the only company where workers have taken strike action.
Interviewed by the independent television station STV, Mondlane said This is not the first time we’ve heard of a company where workers go on strike. We have to see what the problem is, and I think the Board of Directors is working to clear this up.
There is no mystery about the cause of the strike. The strikers told reporters they were protesting because they had not been paid for the past three months, and that delays in paying wages had become common.
They also revealed that EMATUM’s fleet of 24 fishing boats had not put out to sea since the start of the year.
This seemed to take Mondlane by surprise. It was already known that there were problems in licensing the boats and refitting them to bring them up to the standards demanded by the Mozambican maritime authorities. But in an interview given to STV in late March, Mondlane was under the impression that at least five of the boat were fishing tuna, and that by 2017 the entire fleet would be fully operational.
2016 AllAfrica