By Teboho Serutla
Several people suffered minor injuries when the elite Special Operations Unit of the police clamped down on marauding textile factory workers at the Ha Thetsane Industrial Estate on Monday morning.
The irate workers were responding to the police’s refusal to grant them permission to stage a procession to hand over a memorandum to the Prime Minister last Friday, where they were demanding better pay. They were specifically enraged by government’s failure to gazette a 2021/2022 minimum wage which could have seen then earn up to M3,500 a month.
A section of the workers who had resolved not to report for work raided the factories at Ha Thetsane demanding that workers there who were on duty, join the boycott. They barricaded roads with rocks and burning tyres and garbage, while they flung stones at passing vehicles as they chanted songs berating labour and employment minister, Moshe Leoma.
The result was total war as police responded by using batons, water cannon and rubber bullets to quell the riots.
Members of the Lesotho Mounted Police Service, some in plain clothes, were seen beating up people while brandishing what looked like assault rifles.
Among those who was injured was a four-plus-one cab driver who was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet while attempting to fix his car which had broken down.
“The police did not bother to attend to me after I got hit. They instead blamed me for putting myself in the line of fire,” the victim, Oriel Mosebi said, grimacing with pain.
