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The manufacturing line on the Tunicotex manufacturing unit is an extended one on this five-hectare hangar on the outskirts of the city of Slimane (Tunisia), on the opposite aspect of the mountain that varieties the skyline from the home windows of Tunis. The arms of 1000’s of textile employees – most of them girls – measure, sew and wrap.
The spools of colored thread are first reworked into sections of material, then into jumpers for the autumn-winter assortment. These are then embellished with the logos of main manufacturers: Armani, Moncler, Lacoste, Calvin Klein, and so forth.
The ultimate stage is to use the label. Sitting at a counter, the door open to let within the final of the night solar, two girls apply the barcode, repeating the identical mechanical gesture. Each weekend, lorries transport the garments from the large warehouse to the port of Radès in Tunis. From there they’re shipped to the main European ports, after which on to retailers in France, Italy, Germany and Spain. The meagre wage of the employees: just a little underneath 600 dinars a month, round €179.
“In Europe, no person needs to do that work any extra. And if Tunisia grew to become a wealthy nation, we’d not discover a workforce right here both”, says Haithem Bouagila, president of the Tunisian Textile and Clothes Federation (FTTH), a commerce affiliation representing employers. He’s additionally director of the Tunicotex manufacturing unit. Like most others within the sector, it enjoys offshore standing.
Sitting in his workplace, surrounded by the season’s new creations, Haithem Bouagila lists the benefits of the Tunisian market: “near Europe”, “cheap when it comes to transport”, “with an extended custom within the discipline”. However at what value?
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The outsourcing of the fast-fashion business instantly brings to thoughts Bangladesh or China. However the Mediterranean area can also be involved. “Overseas entrepreneurs select Tunisia for its low cost labour, to the detriment of social and environmental rights”, feedback Mounir Hocine, president of the Tunisian Discussion board for Financial and Social Rights (FTDES), an affiliation primarily based within the Monastir area within the north-east of the nation.
Tunisia is the ninth largest exporter of clothes to the EU, after Cambodia, based on a research carried out by the Centre Method du Textile in 2022. Greater than 1,530 firms are implanted there, representing 31% of the nation’s textile manufacturing. 82% of this manufacturing goes overseas. The business is constructed predominantly on a poorly-paid workforce of ladies. The queue of feminine employees in search of authorized help from the FTDES for abusive conditions is getting longer, says Mounir Hocine.
That is what Meriem did after dropping her manufacturing unit job. On the finish of the doorway corridor to her small ground-floor flat within the city of Ksibet El-Mediouni, a couple of kilometres from Monastir, she has arrange her stitching machine. Together with her fingers coated in bandages, that is the place she now produces cleansing cloths. They’re then distributed to Tunisian shops by the Les Mains Solidaires cooperative, a mission supported by the FTDES, Attorneys With out Borders (ASF) and IWatch. Its purpose is to assist reintegrate feminine employees who’ve been pushed out of their jobs with out discover.
The explanation for such conditions: a drop in productiveness, usually as a consequence of sickness, an accident or just age. “Youthful arms are faster,” says Meriem, who discovered herself unemployed on the age of 40. “It might take some time for mine to loosen up after fifteen years of labor.” Her sister, nonetheless sporting a inexperienced apron, concurs: “My fingers usually flip blue from repetitive actions”.
“Round 65% of those girls fall ailing due to their work. They undergo primarily from musculoskeletal problems”, explains Mounir Hocine. He says that the “textile illness” represents a serious burden on state spending.
When she discovered herself out of a job in a single day, in the course of Covid-19, Meriem found that she had no rights and no bargaining energy. Social-security contributions weren’t included in her contract. Her manufacturing unit, a storage on the outskirts of Monastir, was not even registered.
“The sector capabilities like a Russian doll”, observes Habib Hazemi, president of the UGTT’s Basic Federation of Textiles, Clothes, Footwear and Leather-based. Adel Tekaya, president of Utica, the opposite department of the employers’ affiliation in Monastir, confirms that “tracing the chain of accountability could be very sophisticated, if not unattainable”.
That is all of the extra true on condition that the typical age of a textile manufacturing unit hardly ever exceeds 9 years: after ten years, firms can not profit from the tax benefits assured by Tunisian funding legislation. “They take steps to relocate once more, or reopen underneath a unique title. On this means, nobody is chargeable for the social and environmental injury they depart behind”, says Mounir Hocine of the FTDES.
Fatima Ben Amor, a distinguished determine in civil society within the small city of Ksibet El-Mediouni, is aware of this very nicely. This younger activist, who grew up after the 2011 revolution, is working with the Affiliation for the Safety of the Ksibet Setting (Apek) to wash up the bay to the south of Monastir. For years, native factories have been utilizing the bay as a dumping floor for his or her air pollution, which incorporates chemical compounds comparable to dyes, acetic acid, detergents and hydrogen peroxide.
At subject: the washing and dyeing of denims. This supply of “Tunisian satisfaction”, as some native entrepreneurs name it, is a ending course of involving a number of chemical compounds and large water consumption: between 55 and 72 litres per pair of denims, based on the FDTES.
In 2022, 11 million pairs of denims have been exported to the European Union. 85% of them had undergone this remedy.
The president of FTTH assures us that “the massive firms within the area have all the mandatory certifications and a closed cycle that permits the water to be reused”. However the sea reverse the city of Ksibet is decidedly murky. A number of boats are swaying on a blanket of inexperienced algae. “Thirty years in the past, this was a nursery for a lot of Mediterranean fish species. In the present day, there’s nothing left”, feedback a employee on the port of Ksibet El-Mediouni, talking on situation of anonymity.
Various fishermen within the area confirmed that a number of fish had disappeared. Individuals are additionally affected: the local people believes that carcinogenic ailments are on the rise, however a most cancers register has by no means been arrange. The younger activist’s conclusion: “Whether or not it is people, vegetation or wildlife, nothing lives right here any extra. For whose profit?”
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