IRALE

SWATCAWU delivering petition to Parsons

comrades are invited to enrol on the online corse on iversity. the name of the course is "Workers Rights in a Global Economy" which already running.
once again the site : iversity.org
Course name: Workers Rights in a Global Economy

We wake up to yet another proof of a system of governance that does not have the interest of people at heart. The deliebrate neglecting of the AGOA issue by the government is nothing but proof of no will to improve lives of the people.
It should be noted that the conditions as set out by the USA were not necessarily far fetched,neither imposed on the government of Swaziland. Truth is that the government committed itself in last year's ILO Geneva conference. In fact the the Swaziland government had said it needed two weeks post the closure of that conference, and that was in May 2013. All the USA governemnt was to to put the 15th May 2014 as an ultimatum for AGOA. It should be noted that Swaziland had been in the ILO special paragraph for three terms in sucession, and was removed last year after it made this commitment.
It is therefore sad to know that our government's failure to live to its promise has led to this situation. The USA made it clear to everybody that should the Swazi government fail to do as it promised by the 15th May 2014, then they (USA) will be left with no option but to remove Swaziland from AGOA.
The government should have proved by action the love it always preaches by doing as agreed. It is no conspiracy theory that the powers that be are all concerned about their own interest and enrichment, and never about the Swazi populace. It is now obvious that +8000 Swazis are jobless. this number excludes the people whose means of survival and jobs depend on the textile industry. For insance what will become of the street venors sell in Matsapha, Nhlangano and Siteki textile firms, and by extension their families.
In a country where where one worker feeds a family of eight people this means almost ninety thousand people will go hungry. This is happening when we already have 7 of 10 people living below human standard.
Swaziland' unemplyment stands at above 40% and IRALE wonders what will be the situation henceforth. This is one worst form of brutality. We are also aware of the fact that most of the people to be affected are women, and youth, and we just wonder what kind of leaders these?
We wish to confirm that IRALE is in full support of the struggles currently waged by ATUSWA and the federation TUCOSWA of compelling the government to respect human rights in general and workers' in particular.
We also wish to mention that as far as we are concerned, this is a systematic way of impoverishing Swazis and ultimately killing them, and we condemn such. We know that a poor society is a sick society, however we wish to challenge Swazis never to be submissive just because they are hungry and poor. The call is to change Swaziland. let us join hands and make Swaziland a better place to live in, and surely it cannot be under the same tinkhundla system.