Breakthrough could create thousands of jobs for villagers and help exports to other markets
A company in Lesotho has become the first in Africa to receive a licence to sell medical cannabis to the EU.
The country’s top medical cannabis producer, MG Health, announced it had met the EU’s good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards, allowing it to export cannabis flower, oil and extracts as an active pharmaceutical ingredient.
Continue reading...Thousands of migrants play a key role in collecting Catalonia’s waste but must live on the margins
They are everywhere and yet they are almost invisible, living below the social radar as they crisscross the city pushing supermarket trolleys piled with metal tubing, old microwaves and empty beer cans.
The chatarreros are Barcelona’s itinerant scrap-metal collectors, and there are thousands of them. Most are undocumented migrants and so there is no official census, but Federico Demaria, a social scientist at the University of Barcelona who is conducting a study of the informal recyclers in Catalonia, believes there are between 50,000 and 100,000 in the region. About half are from sub-Saharan Africa; the rest are from eastern Europe, elsewhere in Africa and Spain.
Continue reading...Cases appear low and sports venues are packed, but protests are on the rise as jobs are lost and personal debt soars
Traffic jams and soaring pollution levels are back. Political leaders are organising mass rallies, far more focused on fighting each other than any virus. If poorer Nepalis are struggling with the dire economic fallout from Covid-19, on the surface, at least, it appears daily life in the capital, Kathmandu, is back to normal.
“It’s as if nothing has happened. The nightclubs are crowded. Schools and colleges are reopening. Sports venues are full. It doesn’t seem like there is any Covid,” says Sameer Mani Dixit, a public health specialist. “It defies logic.”
Continue reading...Initiative aimed at shielding young people from economic impact of Covid-19 will provide 750,000 paid placements
Nigeria has launched a much-delayed programme that promises to provide jobs for more than 750,000 young people amid worsening youth unemployment.
The scheme, launched this month, is being hailed by government officials as the largest job creation initiative in the country’s history.
Continue reading...Home workers in Sindh province are celebrating new social security benefits, after being denied lockdown funding
Shamim Bano has been an invisible worker for 40 years. Working 12-hour days from home as a “cropper” in the port city of Karachi, she cuts the loose threads off clothing and makes samosas to sell at schools.
Bano is paid about 25 Pakistani rupees (£0.10) a day. It’s a precarious existence for Pakistan’s home-based workers, without access to social security benefits or pensions. Most of these informal workers are women.
Continue reading...A proposed island megacity off Karachi puts precious wetlands – and the millions of jobs that depend on them – at risk
On the island of Bundal, off Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, people gather in their thousands, as they have done for decades, to honour their saint, Baba Yousaf Shah.
As the sun shines on the festivities around the shrine, colourful flags flutter energetically as the air fills with the vibrant clamour of music, singing and feasting.
Continue reading...Hilsa fishermen must borrow to buy equipment but have to sell their catch at a low price to moneylenders – creating a generational debt trap
Kalam Sheikh’s life revolves around the few months when he goes in search of Bangladesh’s prized hilsa fish. When he gets a good catch, he can make enough money to live on for the rest of the year. He can pay off some of his debts and even improve his home.
But this fragile annual cycle has been broken this year, with bad catches bookended by months off the water by the coronavirus pandemic and government restrictions to stop overfishing.
Continue reading...Ruling may persuade shipping companies that scrapping vessels in the dangerous, unregulated yards of south Asia is a false economy
A widow whose husband fell eight storeys to his death while breaking up a supertanker in Bangladesh can pursue a negligence claim against Maran (UK), a British company involved in the ship’s sale, according to a high court ruling.
The judge in London ruled shipping firm Maran (UK) Ltd arguably had a duty of care towards Mohammed Kalil Mollah, 32, who died working on the Ekta, a 300,000-tonne vessel, that was being scrapped at a yard in Chittagong, now Chattogram, Bangladesh. The Guardian wrote about Mollah’s death earlier this year.
Continue reading...Announcement follows Guardian reports that cleaners felt pressure to work though they had symptoms of coronavirus
The Ministry of Justice has announced that cleaners in its central London offices will now receive full pay if they are self-isolating or off sick. The arrangement, which will be administered through cleaning agency OCS, also provides back pay for cleaners who were sick or self-isolating after 1 April.
The announcement follows Guardian reports in June that the MoJ failed to investigate a potential Covid-19 cluster among its cleaners. The cleaners’ union, United Voices of the World (UWV), warned in April that workers felt forced to continue working despite feeling unwell because they could not afford to losewould have lost money.
Continue reading...Cleaner was sacked while isolating with coronavirus symptoms as others fell ill
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and cleaning firm OCS have been accused of ignoring pleas to investigate a potential coronavirus outbreak among workers at the department after at four cleaners say they fell sick with suspected symptoms.
The MoJ cleaning team, employed by cleaning firm OCS and sub-contractor PRS, were told at the start of lockdown that they were essential workers and were to continue to commute into central London.
Continue reading...‘Ticking time bomb’ as contracts aren’t honoured and ports stop crews going ashore even for urgent medical care
Thomas Stapley-Bunten was due to finish his contract aboard the Al Shamal, a huge cargo ship carrying liquid natural gas, early last month. The ship docked at the LNG terminal in Fos Cavaou, southern France, as planned, but by then the world was in coronavirus lockdown. He couldn’t disembark, and international flights were grounded, preventing him from getting home to Newcastle, UK.
So the 27-year-old former Royal Navy warfare officer has been stuck onboard as the Al Shamal criss-crosses the ocean from Qatar to Turkey and France and back. The 34-man crew, from the Philippines, India, Russia and Ireland, have had their pay increased by 50%, but they just want to go home.
Continue reading...Workers in a sector with a history of exploitation face hazards including a lack of masks and overcrowded accommodation
In Sri Lanka, police have been enforcing tough lockdown measures and a strict curfew since March. The country’s inspector general has instructed police to take action against social media users who criticise the government or spread “malicious” pandemic information.
An exception has been made, however, for the country’s tea pickers. A caveat on the country’s lockdown order, issued on 20 March, read: “Paddy farming and plantation, including work on tea small holdings and fishing activities, are permitted in any district.”
Continue reading...Covid-19 lockdown could leave migrant workers across Middle East confined to employers’ households without pay, NGOs warn
Calls by NGOs for increased protection of domestic workers in Lebanon during the coronavirus crisis have cast a spotlight on the predicament of migrant workers across the Middle East, many of whom are highly vulnerable to the pandemic and without support.
In parts of the Levant, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, workers from south and south-east Asia account for a large proportion of labour forces. Closed airports, bonded labour, or other forms of unbreakable employment contracts, and little access to funds, have made it close to impossible for those who want to leave to do so.
Continue reading...Unable to rely on the catch from Lake Victoria, locals are finding success with new and sustainable agriculture methods
It might not be clear why a fish pond project should take root in a region surrounding the great Lake Victoria. After all, as the second largest freshwater lake in the world, it should be able to support the fish and the people that depend on its resources.
But the fact that fish farming is fast expanding here highlights a worrying trend – that the fish population in Lake Victoria has been in steady decline and the quality of what is being caught has been going down too, jeopardising the livelihoods of millions.
Continue reading...As the Gulf state outlaws ‘all forms of gatherings’, migrant workers continue to toil on construction sites
Migrant labourers building stadiums and infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar are still being sent to work on crowded construction sites, despite a government order outlawing “all forms of gatherings” because of the coronavirus pandemic.
With less than 1,000 days to go until the tournament kicks off, workers said it was “business as usual” as construction continued at a relentless pace.
Continue reading...Latest figures show nine stadium worker deaths in 2019 alone, as human rights organisations criticise delay in implementing labour reform
Nine migrant labourers working on the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar died in 2019, the “supreme committee” organising the event has announced, bringing the number of deaths on World Cup projects to 34, since construction began six years ago.
31 of the deaths, including the nine who died last year, are classified as “non-work related”, a term the supreme committee uses to describe deaths that largely occur off the worksite, most of which are attributed to sudden and unexplained cardiac or respiratory failure.
Continue reading...Growing demand for cuy meat, which has long been a national delicacy in Peru, is providing rural women with livelihoods
The growing popularity of guinea pig meat in high-end restaurants in Peru is helping to usher in the return of a traditional, and environmentally friendly, industry led by women.
Top chefs in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia have brought traditional cuy meat back in popularity with roasted, curried and even sweetened versions appearing on menus.
Continue reading...As contagion swept through the Diamond Princess, its crew had to carry on working. Here, they recall the climate of chaos and fear that prevailed during the ship’s two-week quarantine
Christian Santos* remembers staying awake at night, anxiously listening to the sound of his colleague coughing. They were sleeping below deck, in one of the small rooms shared by workers on board the stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship.
He had spent the previous two weeks serving guests who were confined to their rooms, and watching the miserable failure of disease-control measures on the vessel. Now he knew the coronavirus, which had already transmitted to hundreds of people onboard, had almost certainly entered his own cabin.
Continue reading...The death of a struggling street vendor whose stock was confiscated by officials has sent shock waves through Jordan and sparked comparisons with the origins of the Arab spring
Anas al-Jamra carried more burdens than he could bear. As the eldest of 16 children, the fruit and vegetable vendor was the main provider for his parents, brothers and sisters, in addition to his own four young children.
But continuously harassed by police and city officials, who confiscated his stock, the 28-year-old began accumulating debt.
Continue reading...Brand ambassador pledges ‘work will be done’ after children are filmed toiling on Guatemalan farms believed to supply company
George Clooney has said he is “surprised and saddened” by the alleged discovery of child labour on farms used by coffee giant Nespresso, the brand for which he has long served as ambassador.
The Oscar-winning actor and director, who during school holidays worked on his own family’s tobacco farm in Kentucky, vowed that “work will be done” to improve conditions after a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, due to air next week, filmed children picking coffee beans and hauling sacks on six Guatemalan farms believed to supply Nespresso.
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