.. Call for Immediate End to Intimidation of Comrade Oumar BA
As the world marks International Human Rights Day tomorrow, the Our Water Our Right Africa Coalition (OWORAC) condemns in strong terms the repression intensifying across Senegal’s water sector.
The management of Senegalese water company SEN’EAU has sustained a campaign of intimidation against Comrade Oumar BA, General Secretary of the Autonomous Union of Water Workers of Senegal, an affiliate of Public Services International (PSI), and a respected member of our coalition.
SEN’EAU’s actions are a direct violation of fundamental trade union freedoms and basic human rights.
OWORAC, PSI, and Corporate Accountability stand in solidarity with Comrade BA and call on the company and Senegalese authorities to immediately halt all punitive measures against him, respect lawful representation, and uphold international labour standards.
Comrade BA’s latest ordeal follows his questioning of SEN’EAU’s attempt to negotiate a multi-year agreement with representatives of three unions while excluding SATES, the union he leads. SATES is contesting in court a digital voting process that led to the election of trade union representatives in SEN’EAU. The process, according to workers, violates Senegalese labour laws and lacks transparency. For refusing these irregularities, Comrade BA now faces illegitimate sanctions.
SEN’EAU’s actions are not occurring in a vacuum. The company is effectively controlled by French private water multinational giant, Suez, which adds to the power imbalance between its management and workers.
Sadly, this ongoing assault is unfolding on the eve of International Human Rights Day 2025, which carries the theme Human Rights: Our Everyday Essentials. Few essentials are more fundamental than water, and few rights deteriorate more rapidly when control over water is ceded to private actors with limited accountability. A day dedicated to everyday essentials cannot be meaningfully observed where workers are punished for exercising the very rights the day is meant to honour.
SEN’EAU’s conduct exposes how fragile those rights become when private interests govern public goods.
The consequences of this crackdown are already grave. On November 28, Comrade BA embarked on a hunger strike after years of harassment and targeted attacks from SEN’EAU’s management. His circumstances reveal the growing sense of despair within SEN’EAU and the broader conviction among workers that their rights, health and safety are being traded away for a model of water governance driven by private power rather than public interest.
This deterioration inside the company mirrors a wider crisis that communities across Senegal continue to describe, one marked by poor service delivery, rising costs and a steady erosion of trust under the privatised SEN’EAU regime. Unfortunately, the negative impacts of privatised water regimes are not limited to SEN’EAU’s control in Dakar. Similar patterns have been reported and documented in other privately-run water schemes across the country.
Yet even in the middle of this crisis, there remains an opening for decisive change. With major rural water contracts set to expire in 2027 and 2028, Senegal has an opportunity to recalibrate its water governance model and restore accountability by returning decision-making power to the communities and workers who depend on water as a public resource rather than a corporate asset.
OWORAC, PSI and Corporate Accountability align themselves fully with Comrade BA, with SATES, and with every Senegalese water worker who refuses to surrender their rights to a process designed to erode democratic participation and concentrate power in hands that have already failed the public.
Considering these developments, we call for:
an immediate end to all disciplinary and retaliatory actions against Comrade Oumar BA,
the withdrawal of all threats and intimidation directed at water workers,
and the cancellation of the unlawful digital election that has already cast a long shadow over the sector.
SEN’EAU must adopt procedures that respect Senegalese labour law and open the door to transparent and lawful dialogue with legitimately elected representatives, including SATES, whose mandate cannot be erased by administrative manoeuvres.
We also insist on urgent medical care and robust protection for Comrade BA, whose wellness and safety have become a matter of national and moral concern as this crisis deepens. Human Rights Day will carry little meaning if those who defend public accountability are victimised and attacked for doing so.
