2023-11-28 19:09:35
SITARAIL workers protested this Tuesday, November 28, 2023 in Ouagadougou, against the railway blockade and asked the authorities to take their responsibilities to put an end to this “anarchy”.
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“This press conference was wanted by us, because our work tool, the railway, has been at a standstill for more than a week now,” described Halidou Zallé, spokesperson for SITARAIL workers at this meeting. press conference.
This stop, explains Halidou Zallé, is linked to a blockade imposed by “a group of individuals claiming to be an association of railway traders. A group which has no legal recognition and from which the umbrella associations of train station traders have stood out,” he fumed.
He also admits that it was with amazement that they (the SITARAIL workers) noted “on Tuesday November 21, 2023 that individuals proclaimed themselves responsible for railway station associations erected barricades on the railway track in particular in downtown Ouagadougou thus preventing passenger, freight and service trains from circulating.” These barricades, he stressed, suddenly stopped railway activity on a large part of the network.
SITARAIL workers at the press conference
Also, he makes no secret of it, this disruption of activities worries railway workers in the sense that their jobs are threatened. Of the 1,500 SITARAIL railway workers, he said, almost half are Burkinabè. Burkinabè who risk finding themselves unemployed according to Halidou Zallé who specifies that more than 3,000 people dependent on the railway activity also risk finding themselves unemployed.
For the spokesperson for SITARAIL workers, “the anarchy” created by these individuals goes against the words of the President of the transition who said that: “individual freedoms do not take precedence over those of the nation. A nation is not built through indiscipline and disorder.”
Furthermore, SITARAIL workers also warned that if the freight train blockade persists, a shortage or inflation of basic necessities and hydrocarbons will be inevitable. Also, they ended by indicating that they are speaking out to defend their jobs and by extension the interests of the entire Burkinabe people. They therefore requested the intervention of the competent authority to put an end to this anarchy and allow the country to be supplied.
Hamadou OUEDRAOGO
Burkina 24
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