Toamasina: the strike will not stop at Toamasina’s harbor

On Thursday September 23rd 2010, a meeting was held in the SPAT corporation’s conference hall between Toamasina’s Trade chamber, and the MICTSL and SMMC companies in order to reach a deal as early as possible. The meeting was led by Alain Mahavimbina, the Eastern Region’s chief, and attended by several state officials, namely the Transportation department’s General Secretary, the Trade Chamber’s director, and CEOs of the SMMC, the SPAT and MICTSL companies. 

Each side has presented various solutions concerning MICTSL’s contract which is causing problems to several other companies. In between, strikers are requiring the publication of an audit of this company, an investigation about alleged multiple breaches of Malagasy workers’ rights, SMMC’s recovery of whatever superfluous job granted to MICTSL by the contract’s exclusivity clauses, MICTSL’s promise not to blame any striker, the reinstatement of fired employees, a joint promise to enlist every docker as permanent worker as far as possible and care about elderly dockers, the suspension of the deal between the Trade Chamber and MCTSL, imposing the FIFO clause, the suspension of cargo exchanges concerned by the Trade Chamber’s BMD, the suspension of the auction started at the Trade Chamber, the erection of a permanent council as an observer of the solution’s implementation and the acceptation of all of those conditions prior to any signature. 

Strikes and related movements are on their way to be suspended, but those requests are still expecting satisfaction. Unions equally rejected the involvement of police forces into the habor’s issues as a repression force against a legal movement. As a matter of fact, the EMMO REG forces led by Toamasina’s district chief previously entered the harbor and opposed strikers. 

Trade and Transportation ministers joined the area 

On September 24th, both ministers came to engage talks with the conflicting parties. To be continued on Monday