¦ I’d like to start with the Infinity polemic. Should we have to go on hunger strike to be able to get the money that we’ve worked for?

Of course not! But the thing is that although problems started there in November of last year, they had not deemed it fit to report this matter to the ministry of Labour.

We can only solve the problems reported to us.

¦ Are you saying that you were not aware that there was a problem?

They had not officially reported it to the ministry of Labour. What they had done was sent anonymous letters about problems at Infinity.

¦ But why anonymous? Did you ask them?

Yes, and they said that they were afraid of losing their jobs. I told them that that was another reason they should have reported the problem to the ministry of Labour because we would have ensured confidentiality and we would have known how to zero in on the problem and those having the problem. But they didn’t report it and there was a letter, anonymous again, about problems regarding the end of year bonus. But we intervened at the level of the ministry and made sure that they were all paid on the 24th of December.

The bonus, but not the salary?

Not their salaries. The company was already saying that they were having difficulties and whatnot but they promised that they would turn things around in order to pay. We kept on insisting but the ministry needs to have an official statement from an employee to take action against an employer.

¦ What means are available to you?

Well, we sent out our inspectors to the company, met with the employees and asked them to come and give a statement. They did not.

It was only at the beginning of January, when work resumed, that five employees came to give a declaration of non-payment of salary.

¦ You mean to take action you needed an official statement?

It’s similar to a situation where someone is assaulted and refuses to report the matter. I could not intervene if no one reported a problem.

Is this fear something new? Is it related to the fact that Jean Suzanne is seen to be close to power?

I personally believe that the fear has always existed in employees from all companies. For example, there was the problem of the FCC Enterprise that was put under judicial administration in December last year. The problem there again was that the employees did not report the matter for fear of losing their jobs. We have various instances where employees have this fear which I fail to understand, irrespective of who the employer is, but I have found out that one of the reasons this fear exists is because the employees do not know that they have rights.

¦ But the employees at Infi nity were not afraid of losing their jobs. In fact, they said to Jean Suzanne who promised to safeguard their jobs, “We don’t need our jobs because there are jobs elsewhere. What we need is our money.”

Yes, there is a contradiction in what they were putting forward. On the one hand they said they were afraid of losing their jobs and on the other they said they knew that they could easily find jobs elsewhere.

¦ Still, what they want is their due. And that seems to anger you.

Not exactly but someone does not go on hunger strike before they’ve knocked on all doors and found no solution. Where I disagree is that the option of approaching the ministry of Labour was never even thought of. Before they started their hunger strike, I had already called Mr. Suzanne and he came in voluntarily.

¦ And what exactly was his excuse for not paying his workers?

He makes allegations that funds have been unlawfully removed from his company, that equipment has been taken and clients have been moved away from his company.

¦ Does that exempt him from paying people what is owed to them?

Legally, it doesn’t. He has also had problems with his co-director who has left Mauritius and who has allegedly siphoned money away into an account somewhere else.

¦ Isn’t this too much bad luck?

In fact, all he says is substantiated by a report by Price Water House Coopers who have independently looked into all the allegations.

¦ But we are mixing issues here, aren’t we?

That’s what I explained to him.

I did say to him, “If you have a problem today as a manager or as a chairman, you have to bear the responsibility for your choices in life. You have another responsibility - that is to pay the salaries of your staff.” He has understood this.

¦ Fair enough. But where is the money for the workers?

It is coming. Jean Suzanne’s company has funds of about Rs 7 m in the State Investment Corporation (SIC) which bought the building that previously belonged to him. I spoke to the SIC and arranged for Mr. Suzanne to meet them in order for them to decide upon the method to be used to release those funds. I am informed that the SIC has agreed to release the funds on condition that Price Water House be appointed as the party responsible for those funds and for the payment of the overdue salaries.

¦ But of those Rs 7m, there are only Rs. 4.8m left. Is that enough to pay everyone, for every cent they worked for?

That will only transpire once they have established who is on the payroll and how much money is owed.

¦ And what are we waiting for to establish that?

The employees responsible for  the day-to-day management have all left except for one lady who is on strike. But I spoke to the strikers and they have agreed to ask her to collaborate with Price Water House Coopers to facilitate the payment and establish how much is owed to each employee.

¦ What if the Rs 4.8m turns out not to be enough?

If it’s not enough, one of the options is that the company is placed under voluntary administration and the assets sold in order for the salaries to be paid. The other option that Jean Suzanne has mentioned is the possibility of his company being bought by foreign clients with whom he is negotiating right now and part of the deal would be payment of what is owed to the employees and offering them jobs under the name of the new company.

¦ There was a lot of talk about the stimulus package …

He refunded the whole amount to the government and paid off the debts of infi nity BPO Ltd.

¦ All his debts? His rent, the telephone bill?…Apparently he owes a lot of money!

As things stand right now, he does not owe as much as he owed before because most of it was cleared. Now he has a problem. I won’t go into the details of the declaration he made to the police as that would jeopardize the enquiry.

What is of utmost importance now is for the employees to be given the salary owed to them.

¦ They say that they did not get your support.

They didn’t like the fact that I said that they shouldn’t go on hunger strike. Their strike was worthless, since it implied that no one was listening and that they had the support of no one. But the fact that they have met with me on several occasions is proof enough that I have supported them. Had it not been for my intervention, the SIC would not have been ready to unblock funds to pay them. Also, I offered them the workfare programme, which is a safety net offered to all people who have lost their jobs.

¦ What are the conditions?

The conditions are very simple.

If you have lost your job and your company has sacked you, you are entitled to register for the workfare programme. The programme will give you 90% of your basic salary for the first 3 months, 60% for the next three months, and then 30% for the other three months.

Unfortunately, some lawyers of the opposition, no less, went to tell them that what the minister has told you is not true since you have not been fired! The law says, in section 36, that if your employer has not paid your remuneration according to what he had agreed with you, you as an employee are entitled to consider yourself as dismissed and are therefore entitled to the programme.

That’s word for word. So the pity is that, in order to gain political points, the opposition, through professional- lawyers - has misled them on their entitlement to the programme.

¦ So nobody wants to register?

Not until I took a law book, made them read it and gave them a photocopy of it! Now they realize that they were misled. So what we have here is intellectual, political dishonesty on the part of the MMM who have offered their services free to those people for political gain and to mislead them and in so doing, delay them from obtaining the safety net of Rs.9000 or so a month which makes a big difference to a family that is suffering. It is disgusting the way they were misled. And people may turn to me and say, “Shakeel, this is politics…”

¦ Yes, Shakeel. This IS politics.

Isn’t that what you have signed up for?

No, I am sorry. This is not the politics I adhere to. I will never adhere to such a dishonest type of politics.

¦ The general feeling any way is that the labour laws do not protect workers enough. You would of course disagree.

People do not know their rights.

I had a question recently from one of the trade unionists who said to me on an issue of getting reinstated into a job that the law does not provide for it. But it does! The Employment Relations Act provides for it.

But they didn’t know!

¦ Does reinstatement mean that you as an employer are forced to reinstate me, your exemployee, even if we do not see eye to eye any more?

Of course not! No international law and no convention of the International Labour Organisation advocates forcible reinstatement.

¦ So the employer who does not want to see my face still has a choice not to see it.

Arbitration is not forced. It’s voluntary. Even the International Labour Organisation (ILO) says that. So basically what the mediator  or the arbitrator will do is analyze the situation and say, “Wait a minute.

Is the relationship between the employer and the employee so destroyed that if the employee comes back it will not work?

¦ But when an employer doesn’t want you any more, there is no law which forces him to take you back. And this is what you are not stressing enough. In the case of Rehana Ameer, for example, you misled her by suggesting that she could get her job back through the Commission for Conciliation and Mediation (CCM).

Right now, a majority of matters are solved before the CCM. BUT ifthe MBC doesn’t want to reinstate Rehana Ameer, no one can force them to do so. Therefore, she has to go to the industrial court to claim severance allowance.

¦ This is what the MBC has been asking her to do all this time.

She does not want to do so. It’s not for me to tell her what she has to do. I have given her the options. The law says if you want to talk about reinstatement, you can go to the CCM. If this does not succeed, then you have another option, which is to claim for severance allowance at the industrial court.

¦ People are saying you gave her hope when there wasn’t any. You told her she could get her job back.

(Raises his voice) I never said she could get her job back! The trade union movement asked me to ask the Prime minister to get involved and to take a political decision to give instructions to the MBC to reinstate her. And I said I would never ask the Prime minister to do something like that because we do not live in a banana republic.

Someone is sacked. I do not know if she is responsible or not. I was not at the disciplinary committee. I have not seen the evidence. I have not heard the evidence and it is not my role as a minister to do that. We cannot, as a respectable government, interfere in the workings of institutions. You have a court of law.

Go and ask for redress before the institution. As a minister I gave Mrs. Ameer the options, but it is for her to decide what to do.

¦ The only option she wants is her job back.

There is no country in the world where she can be guaranteed that! In no country in the world is there a clause in the law that allows you to say ‘I want that job and nothing else.’ If you’ve lost your job and your employer does not want to sit and talk to work a way out, you claim compensation if you feel wronged and look for another job.

If you are confident of your competence, it shouldn’t be difficult.

¦ But is she aware of this?

I’m sorry but I not only said it to her verbally but at the ministry we wrote a letter to her:“ Following your complaint, we hereby advise you of two options: if you are going to claim for reinstatement, you are advised to go to the CCM…”

¦ And hope for the best. Did you tell her?

She is a trade union leader she should know that she can only hope for the best. Otherwise, what was she doing there as a trade union leader?

And what were those people sitting around a table helping her for? I did tell her that reinstatement is only voluntary. We also informed her that if she truly believed that her work as trade union was the cause of her dismissal, she could go to the police and report it. My information is that she has not done that.

¦ You have spent a lot of time on this case…

Not really. I spend more time on other cases. You get the impression that I spent a lot of time on this one because they’ve made a lot of noise. But then again, lots of noise doesn’t mean much. As far as I’m concerned, I’m only interested in concrete proposals and concrete solutions. The unions are free to propose what they like. That doesn’t mean they are free to get what they want. You cannot force an employer to take you back if the relationship between you and that employer is so bad that you cannot have a normal employer-employee relationship.

She has not contributed to making it better.

¦ But the unions would like to see a change in the labour laws to give more protection to the workers.

Trade unionists have made interesting proposals for a change in the laws. But there are also suggestions on their part which do not make sense. They have to understand the game: it’s a tripartite mechanism. I have to make sure that whatever we do has a fi ne balance between the rights of the employers, employees and government in order for the economy to grow and wealth to increase.

¦ So you would not support a law that would put pressure on the employer to take back an employee who has been sacked?

That would be against all the ILO conventions and I would stand guided by what the ILO, in Geneva, says. We are a member of the ILO.

Now since trade unionists and employers always scream out and use the ILO as a banner to defend their point of view, I’ll do the same: I was told by the director of the ILO, when I was there in June last year, “You cannot force mediation and arbitration. You’ll be wrong to make it forced and mandatory in your law.” Mr Benydin was present and he agreed.

¦ You cannot force two people to work together if one of them does not want to.

Exactly! Would you accept a law which would force you to continue working with an employer you don’t want to work with?

¦ Heavens, no!

You see! When you no longer want to work with your employer, you give three months’ notice and go. If the employer does not want to work with you and doesn’t have enough grounds to sack you, he pays the severance allowance. So you have checks and balances. We adhere to international standards.

We have been congratulated by the ILO as being one of the champions in this region of the world as far as our labour laws go.

¦ But one thing we won’t be congratulated for is transparency in the case of the Med- Point saga. What do you think of that?

MedPoint? (he hesitates) The only thing that I do know and which I did verify is that MedPoint was something which was already decided by the previous government.

¦ You mean Rama Sithanen had in mind to buy the Jugnauth clinic?

Not specifically but the need for a place to set up a hospital for the elederly...

¦ That’s a different issue, nobody is disputing that…

No, I’m sorry but it is important to underline it. For the rest, there was nothing illegal about the whole issue.

¦ What about the moral and ethical side of it?

I will not comment on that.

¦ Thank you for that… comment!