Pic: Eduardo Lopez / Shutterstock.com
Heavy rains flooded a garment factory on February 8 in the northern Moroccan city of Tangier, killing at least 28 workers due to a short circuit. The sweatshop ran in the basement of a residential villa. The tragedy is a wake-up call for Morocco to pay attention to such factories and strengthen its legal and monitoring system to prevent such disasters in future.
To meet growing global demand, numerous factories in Morocco, notably in Casablanca and Tangier, rely on unregulated shadow factories to enhance production and meet deadlines. Factories subcontract to units illegally to better compete with cheaper Chinese and Turkish products.
Such secret factories are primarily located in residential areas and up to 40 people, many of them minors, work in these units, according to Moroccan media reports. Low wages, unsafe work conditions and long hours are typical of such illegal units.
“They say these are illegal factories, but in reality everyone knows that they exist and they are well-known companies. We call them clandestine factories because they do not respect the most minimal security conditions or labour rights," Aboubakr Elkhamilchi, founding member of the Moroccan grassroots organisation Attawassoul, told Ara newspaper.
The tragedy once again highlights the dismal working conditions in a global industry employing mostly women, where precarious labour relations, lack of transparency and impunity continue to be endemic, said the Clean Clothes Campaign.
“The tragedy shows the need for concerted efforts in the industry to improve factory safety and healthy workplace conditions,” it said.
According to the Moroccan employers' association (AMITH), of the 1,000 million garments that are manufactured in the country each year, 600 million are produced in factories sub-contracted by foreign firms.The primary destinations for Moroccan clothing exports are Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Portugal.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)
Heavy rains flooded a garment factory on February 8 in the northern Moroccan city of Tangier, killing at least 28 workers due to a short circuit. The sweatshop ran in the basement of a residential villa. The tragedy is a wake-up call for Morocco to pay attention to factories and strengthen its legal and monitoring system to prevent such disasters in future.