The island of Mau­ri­tius once had a thriv­ing tex­tile indus­try, but dur­ing the global eco­nomic reces­sion, orders com­ing into the island’s tex­tile plants had dried up. To make mat­ters worse, the gov­ern­ment does not have an unem­ploy­ment insur­ance program.

The island off of the African coast in the Indian Ocean also had a thriv­ing tourism indus­try, but that has also had a sharp decrease, as peo­ple from rich nations don’t travel as much as they used to.

From IPS, Nasseem Ack­bar­ally explains the prob­lems in the nation deal­ing with a reces­sion that they did not cause.

“How will I pay my mort­gage loan and my util­ity bills? How will I send my chil­dren to school? How will I buy food?” asks Anita Goodye, a mother of three who lost her job at cloth­ing man­u­fac­turer Shibani Knitwear in Jan­u­ary, together with 500 other workers.

Thou­sands of tex­tile and man­u­fac­tur­ing work­ers on the island find them­selves in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion to Goodye. They strug­gle to make ends meet after jobs were cut and sev­eral fac­to­ries closed down because of lack of orders. Accord­ing to finance min­is­ter Ramakr­ishna Sitha­nen, about 5,000 jobs, or seven per­cent of the tex­tile and man­u­fac­tur­ing work­force, have been lost in the first quar­ter of 2009 alone.

“Mau­ri­tius is rid­ing through a class four cyclone, and the longer its dura­tion, the heav­ier will be the con­se­quences,” he declared on national tele­vi­sion, using the cyclone as a metaphor for the tur­bu­lent finan­cial times the island state is facing.

Far away seems the eco­nomic mir­a­cle of the 1990s that pro­vided jobs and money to many Mau­ri­tians, allowed for the expan­sion of the tex­tile, man­u­fac­tur­ing and tourism indus­tries and served as a model for eco­nomic suc­cess to other African governments.

“We live in uncer­tainty because our fac­to­ries, big and small, are pro­duc­ing and export­ing less. If the cri­sis per­sists, many more work­ers will lose their jobs,” pre­dicts Eric Man­gar, man­ager of Move­ment for Food Secu­rity, a local NGO work­ing against poverty and hunger.

Sacked work­ers, mostly women, demon­strated on the streets in March in front of Gov­ern­ment House in Port-Louis. They demanded jobs, but, above all, their unpaid salary for the past months.

Sev­eral fac­to­ries, includ­ing Shibani Knitwear, Chen­tex Gar­ments have not paid their work­ers since Novem­ber 2008, when the eco­nomic down­turn started to have an impact in Mau­ri­tius. Women are most affected by the finan­cial cri­sis because 60 per­cent of the island’s tex­tile work­ers are female.

“Our fac­to­ries are receiv­ing much less orders for tex­tiles,” com­ments François Woo, direc­tor of the Com­pag­nie Maurici­enne de Tex­tile, employ­ing 5,000 peo­ple. Accord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­tics Office, exports declined by 10.5 per­cent between 2007 and 2008. He fears the finan­cial cri­sis will com­pletely destroy Mau­ri­tius’ tex­tile indus­try and with it tens of thou­sands of jobs.

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