🇲🇺 Private sector workers are getting legal cover for flooding days

Private sector workers are getting legal cover for flooding days

Roads flooding, boss expecting you in: what are your rights? For private sector workers in Mauritius, the honest answer has been not much. This week, parliament started to change that.

Minister Ashok Subron told parliament the Workers Rights Act will be amended to give private sector workers the same emergency protections public employees already have during torrential rain events. The reform, developed with Labour Minister Reza Uteem, is already at an advanced stage. Cyclone Belal in January 2024 brought the gap into focus, when workers across the island had no clear legal standing as roads flooded.

On the support side, 156 evacuation centres are ready to activate, with an allowance of Rs 250 per person per night for evacuees and a matching payment for food losses. The ministry has set up a dedicated climate unit, and a Climate Victims Plan covering a range of disaster protection measures is in preparation.

Belal was the stress test this legal gap needed.

A fifth person dies of leptospirosis as chikungunya spreads west

A 60-year-old man from Facq died Thursday, the fifth leptospirosis fatality in Mauritius this year. Two others remain hospitalised: a 64-year-old man at Candos and a 28-year-old woman at Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital. Mauritius has recorded 20 leptospirosis cases since January.

Chikungunya is at 168 active cases. Down from 200+. It's spreading further, though. The acting Director of Health, Dr Fazil Khodabocus, warned the outbreak is expanding into new areas. Fresh clusters have emerged in Tamarin, La Gaulette, La Preneuse and Bambous, spreading beyond the Rose-Hill and Quatre-Bornes heartland where it first took hold. Two confirmed mpox cases remain under medical supervision.

26 human trafficking cases logged in two years, PM tells parliament

26 human trafficking cases in Mauritius between January 2024 and April 2026, PM Ramgoolam told parliament in response to a question from MP Rubna Daureeawoo. Four cases have gone to court: three await judgment and one has resulted in a conviction.

Since January 2026 alone, authorities have arrested 2,138 people for illegal residence. PM Ramgoolam acknowledged the growing foreign worker population as a driver of trafficking risk. The National Action Plan 2022-26 for combating human trafficking is being revised with the International Organisation for Migration, and there are also plans to tighten the Combatting of Trafficking in Persons Act with heavier penalties and expanded police investigation powers.

A national consultation on cannabis reform is now underway

The National Agency for Drug Control, NADC, has launched a technical committee to review cannabis policy options in Mauritius. CEO Kunal Naik announced the consultation process at a press conference Thursday. The review covers potential decriminalisation, medical use and enforcement approaches.

Skills and jobs: Mauritius is not training for the economy it's becoming

Mauritius must urgently align its workforce with future economic demands or risk falling behind, Areff Salauroo, CEO of La Sentinelle group and president of the Human Resource Professionals of Mauritius, warned on Labour Day. Without targeted investment in skills, the country faces losing competitiveness as technology reshapes the labour market.

Shorts

CEB tariff up 15% from yesterday — 15% more on your electricity bill from May 1, adding Rs 60 to Rs 450 monthly for most households.

Fisherman missing off Albion since Thursday — Mike Bagan, 50, missing since Thursday after jumping from a fishing boat in the Albion lagoon.

2,506 fishermen get digital bad-weather pay — Fishermen's bad-weather allowances are now digital, covering 2,506 registered fishers across 14 posts.

Octogenarian hotel owner: I was robbed of Rs 18M — Rs 18M stripped from a hotel, an 80-year-old Baie-du-Tombeau owner claims.

El Capo's jewels are now a money laundering case — El Capo faces money laundering after Rs 1.6M in jewels surface in his drug trafficking probe.

USD 9.8 billion

Mauritius’ foreign currency reserves at 31 March, roughly 14 months of import cover and the country's financial buffer against external shocks.

8 million

Children estimated to have missed school in Sudan since civil war broke out in April 2023, with programmes now running in displacement camps to help them catch up.

$500 million

The rescue deal that collapsed for Spirit Airlines, which is now preparing to shut down after running out of cash and failing to secure Trump administration funding.

Uganda sentences kindergarten killer to death

Christopher Okello Onyum, a Ugandan-American man who stabbed four toddlers to death at the Ggaba Early Childhood Development Centre in Kampala last month, was sentenced to death on Thursday. The victims were aged between 15 months and two and a half years. The judge rejected an insanity plea, finding the precise and pre-planned nature of the killings left no question of mental incapacity, and noted that Onyum had shown no remorse. The court cheered.

Sahel alliance strikes back in Mali as rebels seize another military base

The Alliance of Sahel States confirmed joint airstrikes after a jihadist and Tuareg separatist offensive killed Mali's defence minister and seized the northern city of Kidal. Niger called the response an intense air campaign in the hours after the attacks.

Now the Tessalit military base near the Algerian border has also fallen, with Malian troops and their Russian allies evacuating without a fight.

Amnesty calls for inquiry into 150 Fulani deaths at a Nigerian army camp

Amnesty International is calling on Nigerian authorities to investigate the reported deaths of 150 members of the Fulani ethnic group inside a military-run camp.

Trump declares the Iran war over to avoid a Congress vote

With the War Powers Act's 60-day deadline arriving May 1, President Trump told congressional leaders that hostilities with Iran are over and he no longer needs legislative approval to continue military operations.

Iran sent a new proposal through Pakistani intermediaries, dropping its demand for an immediate end to the US naval blockade. The naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continues. So does the war, by any practical measure.

Declaring a war over while continuing a naval blockade is a creative definition of peace.

5,000 US troops are leaving Germany as Trump feuds with Berlin

The United States is pulling roughly 5,000 troops from Germany amid disagreements over Iran war strategy and a personal feud between President Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

US court blocks abortion pill deliveries by mail

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the mailing of mifepristone, the most widely used abortion pill in the United States.

The man who has spent 25 years living among snakes on a deserted island

Rouben Mootoocurpen has spent a quarter century as a reptile biologist with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, passing weeks at a time on Ile Ronde, an uninhabited islet off the northern coast, to protect the endemic Round Island boa.

No roads, no shops, no neighbours. Just the boa and the ocean.

Not all conservation work gets a nature documentary.

The quiet science of rebuilding a coastline one mangrove at a time

In a small coastal village, conservation workers are testing whether damaged shoreline can be repaired without concrete walls or heavy machinery. The idea is simple: restore the mangroves, let the roots trap sediment, and give the coast a fighting chance against rougher seas.

It is slow work. Seedlings fail, tides shift, and progress is measured in seasons, not press releases.

Sometimes the strongest infrastructure is alive.