DOWN BECAUSE OF PANDEMIC

Thirty companies in the central Mozambican province of Sofala have announced the suspension of their activities, supposedly because of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, reports Radio Mozambique. Most of these companies are owned by Chinese citizens, and the owners are currently in China. The Sofala delegate of the Mozambique Tax Authority (AT), Tarzan Mandunde, said an investigation is under way to check to what extent the suspension of these companies’ activities can really be blamed on the pandemic. Meanwhile, the chairperson of the Beira Commercial Association (ACB), Jorge Fernandes, has warned that 70 per cent of companies in Beira are showing signs of bankruptcy. He said the ACB has received alarming information on the impact of the pandemic, including the paralysis of many formerly productive units.

Fernandes added that most companies operating in the service sector have already shut down, since the restrictions imposed by the state of emergency had severely affected their business. The pandemic, he said, worsened problems that Beira businesses had already been facing in the wake of Cyclone Idai, which devastated the city in March 2019. The ACB, he added, was particularly concerned at the unemployment caused by so many businesses closing their doors.He said the collective leadership of the ACB is working “so that the business structure does not collapse”, recalling that the association had managed to overcome past crises.

“We are ready to minimise as far as possible these impacts”, he said. “As a business association we have been exchanging experiences in an attempt to overcome this adversity”.

One Chinese company, in the Sofala town of Dondo, has continued to operate, but decided the best way to keep the pandemic at bay was to turn its Mozambican work force into prisoners. The company is the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), which is working on the rehabilitation and expansion of the road from Beira to Zimbabwe. Supposedly to defend the construction camp from the coronavirus, the company kept its 50 Mozambican workers prisoner there for 40 days. According to a report in the Beira daily “Diario de Mocambique”, a team from the Labour and Health Inspectorates, the police and the Sofala provincial attorney’s office visited the camp on

Thursday and ordered an immediate end to the confinement of the workers. The workers told the government team that the Chinese company had ordered them to stay in the camp on pain of losing their jobs. Since 29 March, nobody had been allowed to leave. Since there was no substantial work under way on the road itself, the workers were just doing minor jobs in the CSCEC work yard. The living conditions in the camp, shown on Mozambican television stations, were inhuman. The workers were forced to sleep on bunks without mattresses, inside converted offices, and the company did not even provide them with meals. The workers depended on their families bringing food from home.

Although the company claimed to be fighting the pandemic, the workers were not given basic protective equipment such as face masks, and there was no attempt to enforce social distancing. CVSCEC representative Liu Lilong told the government team and reporters that an agreement on staying in the camp had been reached between the company and the work force, but the workers categorically denied this. Prosecutor Latifo Jafar said the company will be sued for violating the rules of the state of emergency, and for illegally making the workers’ jobs conditional on staying in the camp. The director of public order in the Sofala Provincial Police Command, Marinho Muchanga, said CSCEC was “in flagrant violation” of the state of emergency decree regarding social distancing and the use of masks.