In February this year, a worker died and 46 others were injured following a road accident in Martil. The workers, from Fnideq and M’Diq, were on their way to one of the clothing recycling factories located in the industrial zone of Tetouan, when the bus transporting them overturned. Two months later, in April 2023, a traffic accident claimed the lives of three agricultural workers, while five others were injured, while returning from an agricultural farm in the commune of El Gara in Douar. Laalaoua, near Berrechid.
During the oral question session in the House of Representatives last Monday, Younes Sekkouri, Minister of Economic Inclusion Small Business Employment and Skills, was challenged on the disastrous transport conditions of female agricultural workers by the mixed means of transport. He pointed out that this was not within the jurisdiction of his ministry, which was limited to monitoring inside agricultural farms and not outside, but rather within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transport.
Sekkouri clarified that the Ministry of Transport had established specific specifications for mixed transport responsible for transporting the workers and ensured that they were respected. This statement was criticized by Adi Chajri, a member of the Progress and Socialism Party (PPS) group, who said that “thehe current situation did not correspond to the concept of the social state, which is based on the preservation of human dignity”.
It should be recalled that the reactions are multiplying concerning the conditions of transport of agricultural workers to the farms since the road accident which occurred a few weeks ago in the region of Barachoua, in the suburbs of Khémisset, where eleven people , including nine women agricultural workers, lost their lives.
Thus, the PPS questioned the government on Monday on “ monitoring the transport conditions of agricultural workers“.
Since the accident which occurred at the end of last March, parliamentarians have questioned the minister on the measures that the government intends to take to implement labor laws and monitor the means of transport to agricultural farms.
In a written question, Fatima Zahra Batta, member of the Justice and Development parliamentary group, said that this accident was not the first, but was part of a series of road accidents which claimed lives. to agricultural workers along the roads leading to the farms.
The MP regretted the death of a 14-year-old girl who was one of the workers, which raises the question of the respect of the legal age of employment by the owners of the farms.
The shocking testimonies regarding the dilapidated state of the vehicle and the exceeding of the number of passengers, which was more than 30 people, raise more questions about the respect of the transport conditions of the workers to ensure their safety.
The survivors of this accident as well as the families of the victims continue to suffer from ” serious psychological sequelae without receiving any attention from the authorities, according to the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), a delegation of which visited the families of the victims a few weeks ago.
The association said in a statement that the families spoke of the ” lack of moral or financial support, the absence of psychological follow-up or orientation”highlighting the additional difficulty of traveling a distance of one hundred kilometers to visit their injured relatives at the Ibn Sina University Hospital in Rabat.
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