🇲🇺 Atma Shanto goes on hunger strike to force a rewrite of labour law

Atma Shanto goes on hunger strike to force a rewrite of labour law

Atma Shanto has not eaten since Monday. The union leader pitched up at the Jardin de la Compagnie in Port Louis and began an indefinite hunger strike, demanding an immediate rewrite of two labour laws, the Employment Relations Act of 2008 and the Workers' Rights Act.

His complaint is blunt. Employers in the private sector, he says, often refuse to sit down with unions at all, so collective bargaining never even starts. Shanto wants written agreements that force those talks into the open, exactly as the law already provides.

Labour Minister Reza Uteem visited the garden on Monday, and a meeting is set for Tuesday at 11:30. Employers accused of stonewalling have been summoned to answer for themselves. A hunger strike is a hard thing to negotiate against; the clock now runs on the minister, not on the man who stopped eating.

Police probe crypto platform DistributeX over a suspected Ponzi scheme

It costs about Rs 7,000 to get in. That first payment buys a spot on DistributeX, a crypto marketing platform, after which members earn by clicking, sharing and doing small daily tasks. The Anti-Money Laundering Unit of the Central CID, the police financial crime arm, has opened a preliminary investigation into whether it all runs like a Ponzi scheme.

The Financial Services Commission, the regulator, had already warned the public about the unlicensed operator in April. No victim has filed a complaint yet. That is how these schemes survive, the cash moving while recruits keep signing up.

Rs 2 billion drainage works begin around Poste-de-Flacq

The government has launched the first phase of a drainage project worth more than Rs 2 billion at Poste-de-Flacq, on the east coast. Work started on 6 August. The aim is to cut risk of the flooding that repeatedly swamps villages across the low ground of the east during heavy rain.

It is a rare piece of lasting spending aimed at a problem everyone sees coming. Drains do not make headlines until the water rises. This one is being built before the next downpour, not after it.

Minister Jeetun defends a reworked tax treaty with India

Financial Services Minister Jyoti Jeetun has defended the safeguards built into the new protocol on the double taxation treaty between India and Mauritius, the pact that sets how investment routed through the island gets taxed. Jeetun says the reworked terms protect the financial sector, a pillar of the economy that rivals keep trying to undercut.

Minister Boolell pitches a waste plan to pig breeders

Pig breeders have long asked for a lift, the sector runs on thin margins and cheap feed is scarce. Agriculture Minister Arvin Boolell used a meeting at Vaghjee Hall to announce a project that would turn waste from pig farms into something worth money, from compost to energy, while promising closer dialogue with the breeders themselves.

Shorts

Cure Waves ready for Orlando Pirates – Mauritian champions La Cure Waves SC say they are primed for the visit of Orlando Pirates and out to make it count.

Grand-Bassin readies a Shravan Maas prayer – Devotees gather at Grand-Bassin on 23 August for a Shravan Maas prayer around a new Ganesh statue with five faces.

Belle-Mare card game ends in a police clash – Police patrol at Belle-Mare ran into hostile crowd on Sunday when a card game under a tent boiled over.

From Mauritius to Columbia by way of Berkeley – Mauritian student Meiya Gujjalu is heading to Columbia after a winding path from Madagascar fieldwork to Berkeley.

Air Mauritius hands passenger to Gatwick police – An Air Mauritius flight to London saw a passenger handed to authorities at Gatwick after an onboard incident.

Rs 25 million

That is the top fine for anyone who touches, feeds, chases or tries to move the southern elephant seal now hauled out on the shore at Les Salines. Officials want admirers to keep well back and let the rare visitor be. Read more

Rs 1.04 billion

Swan General booked that as its net profit for 2025, a record for the insurer. Solid underwriting and steady returns did the heavy lifting across a flat market. Details

11

That many people died after Houthi rebels, who are backed by Iran, struck Saudi Aramco's Jazan refinery and the Yemeni Red Sea port of Mokha, a fresh jolt to the oil routes Mauritius leans on for fuel. More

Madagascar moves to reclaim colonial land from settler heirs

Madagascar's highest court has cleared a law that lets the state take back land still registered to foreign settlers from the colonial era. It revives a property dispute that has simmered for generations.

Supporters frame it as sovereignty finally catching up with history. Owners and their heirs see expropriation dressed in patriotic language. Both can be true at once, which is why courts, not slogans, will decide how far it reaches.

Cameroon and Malawi crash the Women's AFCON semis

Cameroon knocked out holders Nigeria and Malawi stunned Ghana to reach the semifinals of the Women's Africa Cup of Nations, both booking a spot at the World Cup.

Senegal charges 71 men as its crackdown widens

Prosecutors have charged 71 men with 'unnatural acts' as Senegal widens a crackdown that followed tougher penalties for homosexuality, passed only months ago.

A magnitude 7.4 quake kills at least 20 in Colombia

At least 20 people are dead after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake tore through western Colombia, flattening buildings and cutting off towns. Rescue crews are still digging through rubble, so the toll is expected to climb.

Big quakes are rare enough there that many buildings were never built to take one. That gap between the shaking a place gets and the shaking it is ready for is what turns a tremor into a disaster.

Jharkhand students face tear gas over exam claims

Police fired tear gas to scatter students in India's Jharkhand state, where crowds are demanding a probe into alleged rigging of the civil service exam and an overhaul.

Tupac Shakur's murder finally reaches trial

Thirty years on, can a jury finally name who killed Tupac Shakur? Duane 'Keffe D' Davis has gone on trial in Las Vegas, accused of orchestrating the 1996 shooting.

Trou Chenille, a first refuge for the enslaved, gets a rescue

Below Le Morne sits Trou Chenille, one of the first villages where enslaved people lived before being moved out in the 1950s. Rebuilt in 2020 to mark 185 years since abolition, it was then left to rot.

Now Heritage Minister Mahen Gondeea has visited three times and ordered repairs: signage, a rebuilt trail, a survey. For a site the world calls a symbol of freedom, the neglect stung.

🙏 Merci, à demain! 👋

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