Grinding poverty drives unprecedented general strike

Mineral-rich and free of conflict, Guineans should be able to enjoy a relatively high standard of living compared to war-torn or resource-deficient neighbours. Instead, life in the normally hectic capital ground to a halt this week due to an unprecedented general strike called over desperately low wages and soaring prices. The strike, which began on Monday, slowing the usually traffic-clogged seafront capital to a Sunday-like hush, was still largely in effect five days later on Friday despite government appeals to people to return to work. “The people suffer from poverty. They work and work, but the money they get is not enough. For us taxi drivers the price of petrol is just too expensive so I decided to strike,” said Mamadou Cherif Diallo, who works the tumbledown city built on a skinny peninsula home to around a quarter of the country’s nine million people. On Tuesday, stone-throwing youths trying to enforce the stoppage targeted the cavalcade of President Lansana Conte. His bodyguards returned live fire, killing an innocent bystander. Anxious to keep a lid on potential trouble, the government stepped up negotiations with unions to end the strike, but its efforts largely failed. “We have had enough,” said Diallo. “This has been going on for years. I don’t know how old I am but I’m more than 25 and still not married and I can’t marry because I don’t have the money.

Finding a taxi on the normally bustling Avenue de la Republique was difficult during the strike

“It’s a big, big problem for me and my friends,” he complained. “A man must marry but I barely make enough to feed myself, never mind maintain a wife and children.” Guinea is rich in diamonds, gold, bauxite (aluminium ore), iron ore and uranium, not to mention the agricultural potential of this country, which is the source of West Africa’s two main rivers and spans the dry Sahel region to the north to lush tropical rainforest in the south. While average income per capita is US $2,097 according to UN figures, the majority of people earn less than US $1 a day. Despite the hardship of everyday life for the majority of people, the IMF has released a series of positive assessments over Guinean economic reform over the last year, and government ministers expect the World Bank and the European Union to resume budgetary support on the back of these reports. “The government has responded well to Fund recommendations in both policy and technical areas,” said IMF country representative Dennis Jones. “Good examples on policies are liberalisation of the foreign exchange market and openly accepting the need for a move to an automatic petrol pricing mechanism.” Under IMF policy, Guinea adopted a floating exchange rate on 1 March 2005, and as a result the Guinean Franc has free-fallen, losing 38 percent of its value against currencies like the dollar, according to the IMF. Informal money-changers on the streets of Conakry hawk plastic bags full of tattered Guinean Francs in exchange for a few crisp dollars or euros.

The bauxite mine and aluminium plant are the backdrop to Fria town

And this means that a university graduate lucky enough to work in the civil service earning around 200,000 Guinean Francs, has seen that monthly wage depreciate 40 percent to the equivalent of US $40. The currency depreciation has had a strong impact as Guinea, despite its varied environment, imports the majority of its rice, the country’s staple food. As a result, a 50-kg sack of rice is fast becoming out of the reach of most people - at US $22. Steady increases in petrol prices - the latest being a 10 percent hike last week - too are adding more steam to already raging inflation, which is currently at 28 percent according to the IMF. “The Guinean Franc is worth nothing now and at the same time prices are going up. People can’t cope,” said businesswoman and opposition politician from the Union of Republican Forces (UFR) Kaba Rouguy Barry. “People struggle to eat from day to day - even young girls are selling themselves to ensure that the family can eat. Society is completely messed up.” Although Barry and other opposition leaders are divided in many things, they stand united in the belief that more democracy is essential to Guinea’s future economic success and stability. “It is the number one thing that has to change in Guinea - everything else depends upon that,” Barry said. But for those badly hit by dire economic straits, more cash and more buying power are a top priority and trade union leaders are demanding a four fold increase in wages.

Fishermen mend their nets at the fishing port in Conakry

Women shoppers in the suburbs of Conakry buy food meal by meal, not everyone has running water, and even those who do can only expect their taps to flow two or perhaps three times a week. As for electricity, only embassy districts or neighbours of one of the president’s wives can bank on having light at night. But opposition leaders are also concerned that this week’s strike could be the trigger for a rise in popular protest that could lead to violence. Although presidential elections are not due until 2010, Conte’s collapse while on an official overseas tour in 2002 has fuelled fears ever since of health problems and potential instability. The president, who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1984, is said by diplomats to be an excellent soldier but less of a statesman. Diplomats who asked not to be identified said he has long handled government affairs much like a village chief, taking decisions personally and confining networks to close family. But as old retainers scrabble to make good while they can, protecting lucrative mining and logging deals in which national resources are being sold off at cut prices, a new generation of Guineans are moving to the fore, apparently with a very different idea about how things should be done. On the political front, Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo and Interior Minister Kiridi Bangoura have won praise as reforming influences, spearheading discussions with donors and organising local elections in December, that though not a shining example of perfect working democracy were widely seen as a leap in the right direction, according to diplomats. “I am from a different generation to most of the people who run the country today,” Bangoura told IRIN in an interview. “I was born in 1963 and those that run the country were born between the 1940s and 1950s. In that respect, I bring the worries and experience of my generation.”

Moustapha Naite, founder and owner of Mouna

And in the private sector, a glimmer of that new generation lies only a few steps along the Avenue de la Republic from Conte’s official residence, at a new venture called Mouna Internet - a flashy new cyber café and communications centre that defies the routine power-cuts to provide what the owner hopes is a standard of service comparable to anything in New York or London. “One of the best assets I have is my youth,” says 29-year-old Moustapha Naite, the founder and executive chairman of Mouna who studied in the US but turned down a job there to set up a business back home. In fact, so important is youth to Naite that he operates an age bar - he won’t employ anyone over 35. “There is much to do in restructuring the whole system here in Guinea - it’s outrageous how government policy is set or how things are decided, not to mention the competency of the people leading us,” said Naite. “It’s time to change, the old ways just don’t work anymore.” To read the full interview with Interior Minister Kiridi Bangoura, CLICK HERE