Tunisia / Where are the jobs ?

Tunisia’s “Arab Spring” revolution, born out of economic despair, is failing to deliver the jobs and opportunities of a better life that its people long for, and had once expected.

While Tunisia has largely avoided the bloodshed afflicting much of the region, a prolonged political crisis is hurting the economy badly and Mohammad Abd El Momen is one of the victims.

“We started the revolution and the politicians got the jobs. We got the tragedy,” said El Momen, who until July worked at a factory making safety boots for construction workers in Europe.

Then his Italian employers – like many foreign investors – gave up and closed the plant in Bizerte, a coastal city 65 km (40 miles) north of Tunis. Now the shopfloor is deserted, the factory gates are locked and 4,500 more Tunisians are unemployed.

“I cannot find even the cash for milk for my children,” El Momen said outside the plant in Bizerte, where former factory families now survive on meagre state handouts.

Their prospects remain bleak while ruling Islamists and the secular opposition argue over forming a caretaker cabinet, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and polarisation that is worrying investors and international lenders alike.

Tunisia’s uprising – and the Arab Spring – began with a cry as much for opportunity as for freedom when unemployed university graduate Mohammed Bouazizi, who scraped a living selling vegetables, set himself on fire in December 2010.

Even before he died from his injuries, outraged Tunisians took to the streets and the following month autocratic leader President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country. This raised hopes among Tunisians of a better life, and encouraged fellow Arabs to rise up against their rulers around the region.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Tunisian factories close, jobs go as political crisis drags on | Reuters.