We never said the private sector must not operate in Tunisia," said President of the Republic Kais Saïed as he made an unannounced visit Wednesday to the headquarters of the National Cellulose and Esparto Paper Company (French: SNCPA) "We need to safeguard public enterprises which have to remain the property of the State and the Tunisian people," he added. Saied reviewed, as he met with some employees, a number of corruption files over the last two decades, a video released at dawn by the Presidency of the Republic showed, before touring the plant. Staff members shed light on maintenance failures, the purchase of noncompliant equipment and recruitment breaches. The President said public enterprises will not be privatised but need to be reorganised. Reacting to comments by a local man of Majel Bel Abbès, as he visited the governorate of Kasserine, Saïed said communitarian companies are endowed with a mechanism of assistance geared towards women collecting esparto and to support the agricultutral sector. S NCPA is a public enterprise created in 1980 after the merger of two companies which make up the industrial complex of Kasserine. They are the National Company of Cellulose set up in 1956 specialised in manufacturing esparto pulp and the national company of esparto paper created in 1968. SNCPA employs 897 staff members and contributes to job generation for nearly 6,000 households in Kasserine, Gafsa , Sidi Bouzid and Kairouan through its collection centres. The company's activity in Kasserine has ground to a halt for three years following the purchase of a TND 6.5 million defective thermal boiler from a Turkish company. Activity resumed on October 14, 2022, after the repair of the boiler before it was brought again to a standstill over the scarcity of raw materials for manufacturing paper (wood pulp) after producing 1, 540 tonnes of paper. In April 2023, the company resumed activity after being supplied with a quantity of raw materials. The SNCPA has failed since 2020 to supply printing works with paper fo r printing textbooks as a result of the suspension of activity. Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse