“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
Upton Sinclair.
A fire destroyed the lives of 55 Moroccan workers, among which 35 women, in a mattress factory in Hay Hassani, an industrial district of the city of Casablanca.
According to aljazeera.net, "Civil protection officials said it had become clear that safety norms had not been applied in the Rosamor factory in the south-west of Morocco's biggest city."
An emergency officer said managers had locked in staff during work hours to stop theft, trapping them in the fire on Saturday. The blaze quickly turned into an inferno, burning victims alive, while others leapt to safety, but many women workers were too scared to jump and were trapped.
Later on, the authorities arrested the factory's bosses and an enquiry into the causes of the blaze was ordered.
Unfortunately, In a country where a savage and primitive predatory form of capitalism has flourished, endemic corruption, a quasi-absence of state regulations, added to a systematic abuse of workers' rights, tragedies like the one that struck Casablanca might reoccur.
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2 comments:
Hi Hisham,
It's unfortunate that in Morocco working conditions in many factories leaves to be desired. Workers have no means to protest about them as they are used not employed.
Workers are usually at risk because the employers think of benefiting from their workers and not benefiting them.
This incident is to be added to the death of the construction workers in Kenitra when a building under construction collapsed.
Lack of regular inspections and corruption are the main reasons behind such catastrophes.
For some employers getting a licence to open a project by whatever means is like getting a driving licence. Once they get it they are never checked about their fitness to drive physically and mentally. When an accident happens, it is attributed to the vehicle and not to the driver.
Morocco still needs the rigorous implementations of its existing laws. It's not enough to have them on paper as it isn't enough to have sealed approved documents to start a project. What is needed above all are employers who value the well-being of their employees and not just the well being of their businesses.
I couldn't agree more my dear friend.
If the sleazy politicians and public servants were doing their jobs regularly, if the justice system was independent enough, and if the government was enforcing the law as it should have done in this particularly tragic case, many of the ills of Morocco would have been solved. Of course corruption will probably never be eradicated, as it is primarily motivated by greed, but at least we could have achieved a dignifying minimum for our poor and helpless workers.
You see we're back to the basic postulate: Where there is no genuine democracy, there can be no social justice.
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