Racketeers grow rich on Tunisia jobs scheme

Tunis: It is the talk of the cafés in Kasserine, a town set in an arid plain overlooked by the Jebel ech Chambi mountain that separates Tunisia from Algeria.

A year ago, as Tunisia rose up against the regime of Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali, the town's young people won heroic status by facing down police bullets. There were 20 deaths. One of the protesters' main demands was for jobs, but now local officials are speaking out against the dangerous infiltration of local job schemes by racketeers.

"It's not a little mafia, it's big mafia," emphasises Maher Bouazzi, 38, a lawyer who, since May, has headed the town council. "Investigating the scale of this racket, I have received threats. People come to me from Hay Zuhur [a poor neighbourhood] to say they have been asked to warn me that ‘other people' may burn my car."

Graphic threats

Town hall officials who are investigating have received even more violent and graphic threats, he adds. "Even the ministers in Tunis know that when they move to unseat this mafia, they will have to move carefully."

After the revolution, the publicly funded work schemes were expanded by an interim government desperate to respond to the demand for jobs. But with central government exercising only shaky control over Kasserine, a new level of corruption has flourished around the schemes, which are known as chantiers (work yards) in French.

Those milking them for profit have also bought influence among the lower-ranking staff at the regional governor's office, according to Bouazzi and other sources in Kasserine.

There are signs that Tunis is aware of the problem. Hocine Dimassi, the finance minister in the Islamist-led government that took office in December, has criticised stopgap measures to ease unemployment, which he said have so far cost 767 million dinars (Dh1.8 billion) while "circling around the problem without really homing in on it. This is a useless waste, at a time when the country lacks means to face up to the explosion of needs."

Network of patronage

The chantier system was introduced under Bin Ali. As people drifted in from the countryside to swell the poorer neighbourhoods of provincial towns, his Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party used the schemes to defuse tension and build up networks of patronage.

In the countryside, the revolution has uncovered a huge need for better housing, transport, health services, water supplies and nutrition. Families still tend to be large, and often struggle to survive on what one or two wage-earners bring in from the odd day of low-paid work. The patchy coverage of the previous regime's welfare safety net remains in place, but newly vocal communities are increasingly impatient for change.

In Kasserine, unemployment was more than 36 per cent before the revolution among those with recent higher education diplomas and has risen since. Workers lucky to be accepted on to a scheme are sent to work as cleaners or in other unskilled jobs.