Morocco Cracks Down on Factories Violating COVID-19 Safety Measures

Certain production units in the kingdom have become real hotbeds of contamination. Several Moroccans have been infected in recent days within factories or production units, due to non-compliance with health and safety rules. A situation that occurs at a time when Morocco is preparing to begin the gradual lifting of confinement, in order to allow the resumption of economic activities, after two months of a state of health emergency, reports the daily Assabah.

Several production units do not always comply with the minimum safety rules imposed by the authorities. They do not require the mandatory wearing of masks in the workplace or social distancing. Worse, disinfectant or antiseptic products are not available. Added to this is the non-compliance with the new working conditions imposed by Covid-19. Yet these units employ a large number of people, generally from working-class neighborhoods; which causes the number of contaminations to skyrocket. For example, the city of Casablanca alone has recorded 750 cases in these units that have not experienced a shutdown, unlike several other closed factories.

Several organizations, including the Moroccan Network for the Defense of the Right to Health and Life, have denounced these hotbeds of contamination that sabotage all the efforts made by the authorities to curb the spread of the virus. For the network, the Ministries of Health and Employment must crack down to enforce compliance with health protection rules, or sanction offenders through the closure of their production units, pending the containment of the pandemic.