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afrol News, 7 February - In Mauritania, wages and working conditions have stagnated at 1980s levels and the countryside and shantytowns are poverty-stricken while the national economy experiences high growth rates. In very precarious conditions themselves, trade unions struggle to pull their country out of misery and neglect. According to the latest assessment by the IMF, Mauritania has attained "macroeconomic stability with low inflation ... , economic growth is relatively robust, and international reserves remain at a comfortable level." IMF Diretor Eduardo Aninat "commends" Mauritanian authorities "for their impressive track record of implementation of their ... economic program." Reality on the ground is however perceived very differently. Chej Bahi, aged 59, has been working at the port of Nouakchott as a professional docker since 1972: "Working conditions have continued to worsen. Recently, I was very ill and had no means of receiving medical care. My wife’s medical costs for giving birth still haven’t been paid." He points to one of the workers at the very top of the cargo pile. "Those workers up there are not paid anything more for the risk they run. They climb without ladders, using only the container fastening bars for support. Some of them fall from the containers onto the dry docks. There is a work-related accident every five minutes but the workers have no medical coverage and the company does nothing to ensure occupational health and safety. There are no showers, gloves or helmets." Trade union leader Abdallahi Ould Mohammed in an ICFTU interview holds the IMF and the government poverty and labour policies have been a mixed blessing. "For more than 15 years, the trade unions have been effectively excluded from the process of social and economic reforms being undertaken under the structural adjustment programmes - such as the new strategy to fight poverty which runs from the present time until 2015." There are however no immediate plans to involve civil society in the structural reform programmes. The government is to receive "technical assistance from the IMF and the World Bank" implementing its poverty reduction strategy and have promised the IMF to "complete the privatization of Socíeté Mauritanienne d'Electricité (SOMELEC)," according to IMF's Eduardo Aninat. On the issue of privatisation of state-owned enterprises, Mauritania’s trade unionists however are against what they view as "a clearance sale of state-owned property," according to Ould Mohammed. They recommend that strategic sectors remain in government hands.
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