adminNgakobo — A sugar refinery — the war-torn Central African Republic’s biggest factory — is back in business after soldiers recaptured it from former rebels who occupied it for more than a year.
In a rare boost to the impoverished nation’s battered economy, the plant’s 150 employees are back on the job in Ngakobo in the east of the former French colony — with African peacekeepers providing security.
They had fled to the capital Bangui amid sectarian violence sparked by a March 2013 coup by the mainly Muslim Seleka movement. “We had no more work, no more money. We were bored, so we are happy to be back,” said 30-year-old Solange Ngortene, a secretary at the factory.
Under a blazing sun, workers are busy cutting sugar cane on four hectares (10 acres) of rolling green fields. They would go on to cut 200 tonnes of raw cane that day, enough to produce 20 tonnes of sugar worth about $27,000.
“I was unemployed for more than a year. I was only getting between 10 and 30 percent of my gross salary. That wasn’t easy with a family to provide for,” Ngortene told AFP.
Like many employees of factory operator Sucaf, Ngortene fled with her family to Bangui when the Seleka seized swathes of the landlocked African state in December 2012.
The Seleka, a predominantly Muslim rebel militia, looted the refinery, which normally produces 11,000 tonnes of sugar a year, and then commandeered it at their eastern base. — AFP
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