The Moroccan textile trap basement

In front of the door of the textile workshop in Tangier where 28 people died on Monday, several officials tried on Tuesday to investigate what had happened while dozens of onlookers watched them in the rain.

The basement was flooded after a night of torrential rain and most of the workers died inside.

The mortal remains have already traveled to their hometowns, including the corpses of four sisters from Fez.

There is still the mud on a street of residential houses, a 15-minute drive from the city center.

And there are several dark points to clarify: Was it really a clandestine workshop as the authorities claimed at first?

If it was, how was it allowed to function?

And who was the clothing made there intended for?

Adil Defouf is a 38-year-old textile entrepreneur, owner of the Novaco company, which employs 600 people, and a member of the Moroccan Association of Textile and Clothing Industry (Amith, in French).

“Here the focus is being placed on the businessman, who is in the hospital right now.

I do not know that man, although they have told me that he had closed the place with the pandemic, that he had to pay the rent for the workshop and had just reopened it.

But the problem is not in the workshop, but in the terrible sanitation infrastructures of the city.

The company in charge of sanitation does not invest in infrastructure.

And the authorities are not doing their job of inspecting, "he says.

The workshop, according to Defouf, was not clandestine.

It shows the company's registration in the Commercial Registry, where it has appeared since 2017 under the name of A&M Confection, and includes that of its manager: Adil el Boullaili.

"Did the ministry come by and tell them that they did not comply with the working conditions?" Defouf wonders.

"It was not a shell company," adds Defouf.

“And the people were not exploited, as is being said in some media.

Here, if you don't give the minimum wage to the workers, nobody comes to work, because there is a lot of competition.

And the minimum wage is equivalent to about 300 euros per month, which with the bonuses can amount to 350 euros.

There were people who came in and out to eat and came back in.

There was a mechanical equipment that needed an industrial electrical charge, "says the businessman, who adds:" Who provides them with that charge?

Outside my workshop there is a security guard, in the street there is another and in the neighborhood another, who in turn has a boss.

Didn't you see so many people come and go every day?

Defouf sentences: "The mayor of Tangier [Bachir Abdellaoui] and the Minister of Labor [Mohamed Amekraz] should resign."

The vision offered by Bouker el Khamil, president of the Tangier association Attawassoul (Communication, in Arabic) is very different from that of the businessman.

“We have been investigating these workshops for many years in Tangier.

And we know that working conditions are very bad.

But I'm not talking about that anymore, but about the security conditions.

How can you put almost 50 people in a basement without ventilation, without escape routes, without windows? ”El Khamil wonders.

The Attawassoul organization prepared in 2019 together with the Setem association, based in Catalonia, an investigation in which they interviewed 132 employees, most of them women, from the textile sector in Tangier.

36% indicated that they were not registered with social security;

56%, who received a salary below the minimum wage, and three out of four claimed to feel fatigued very often.

Finally, 40% said that there was verbal violence in the company and 70% claimed to have suffered pressure and threats at work.

No one knows, at the moment, where the clothes that were manufactured in the basement of that workshop were destined.

Both Denisse Dahuabe - a member of Setem - and Bouker el Khamil believe that the final recipient was some large multinational.

But they acknowledge that they still have no evidence to prove it.

“We have been denouncing for many years the darkness in the supply chain of these multinationals [in the textile sector].

These companies have a very subtle way of letting go of their responsibility, ”says Dahuabe.

Entrepreneur Defouf believes that the basement probably worked for some large company: “There are workshops here that only have the capacity to offer 3,000 pants a week.

So how is it possible that some workshops give you 15,000?

Where do they get it from?

Well, they surely use these basements for support.

There are large companies that check production every day, morning and evening.

But not all brands do this supervisory work ”.

Regarding working conditions, Defouf argues that many employees prefer to work underground because they charge more: "They tell the employers in the basements: 'What you are going to give to social security you give to me.'

People wanted to register for social security only since March last year, when they realized that they could receive social benefits [due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic].

Defouf concludes that basement workshops are not bad by definition, although he admits that they are not "100%" legal.

“That just means they have to be restructured.

A factory in a basement does not have to be risky if it has an emergency exit and adequate ventilation ”, he says.

The activist Dahuabe estimates, however, that working conditions became even more "degrading" with the thousands of layoffs caused by the pandemic.

“And the responsibility for the conditions of the workshop must fall first and foremost with the owner.

And ultimately, in the company that has generated the demand ”, he argues.