Comprehensive development represents the ultimate goal of every pioneering society. It is ambition and aspirations, plans and financing, but it is mainly actions and achievements that may not be available without a well-trained and capable workforce, and without brave and competent entrepreneurs who shall be serious and upright and comply with moral and patriotic values and whom people trust.
Tunisia has a good group of entrepreneurs, who meet these characteristics. They flourished after independence, which opened the doors for them to prominence, and provided them with reasons to engage in economic activities of all kinds.
During the colonial era, most of them were monopolized by non-Tunisians, not to mention that the first battles that independent Tunisia fought were to make the economy Tunisian.
Together, the workers, on the one hand, and entrepreneurs, on the other hand, form the backbone of every development process, and they are the main guarantors of its progress and prosperity. Mr. Hédi Bouchamaoui is one of the major entrepreneurs in Tunisia.
I knew him since the 1950s as an energetic Bourguibian constitutional fighter, and pragmatic visionary, defying dangers, helping the resistance fighters in the city and in the mountains, providing them with supplies and money, sheltering them, and supporting them.
After independence, he left the field of political activity and moved away from direct action within party structures, but he did not stop assisting and supporting all national movements.
Thus, he was an example of a national fighter during colonialism in the struggle for independence, and after that, in the battle of building and construction.
He devoted his life to the economic activity in which he exerted all his efforts, and spent all his life. He began to be active in the economic field at a young age, when he was no more than ten years old, following in the same footsteps that his father had followed.
The activity of the first company he established started in 1948, and its activities varied and included almost all fields, so it carried out construction works in Tunisia represented in the construction of hostels, institutes, and economic housing.
His activity extended to the Libyan country, and included the fields of water and soil conservation, building roads, building terraces, building dams, extending the irrigation network, creating and exploiting nurseries, planting fruit trees, and providing pastures, which are the same activities that he used to carry out in Tunisia…
He also built ground reservoirs and others raised on columns…
He also set up water pumping stations and laid sewers and canals for drinking water. Then he stormed the field of oil works in Tunisia. He laid pipes to transport crude oil and gas and built counting stations and oil collection stations. He also built a floating oil station that was the first in Tunisia and Africa with Tunisian hands. He conducted oil drilling and exploration in Tunisia and Egypt…
He has other activities in industry, international trade, and services, too numerous to mention. The results were encouraging, and today he is the owner of the first oil company for exploration, especially in the Arab and African worlds, and it is the only one in which the state or foreign companies do not have a share of its capital.
Throughout his career, the late dealt with Tunisian, Italian, French and American companies… He lived with their engineers and learned work techniques from them and thus, he gained a rich experience in the field, which qualified him to imitate them, so he did so and excelled.
He did not stop at that point but rather strived to transfer that experience to Tunisian workers and engineers, as he did not hesitate to open schools for them at his own expense. He creates a generation of specialized workers and engineers in all fields. Mr. Hédi Bouchamaoui succeeded in his professional career in a difficult field in which he raced against the presence of private Arabs, and this is due to his keen intelligence, conscious audacity, and dedication to work.
He treated his workers well, provided them with the best wages, and provided them with all social guarantees. He provided them with good accommodation and delicious food in the work sheds. His company’s accounts were transparent. He did not seek to evade taxes, and he did not cheat with payments.
This was his behavior wherever he worked in Tunisia, Libya, or Egypt.
He gave Tunisia a good image and left a good impression on it.
He used to follow a strict methodology with himself and his surroundings in his work and an elaborate system. He always stressed that there is no success in any work without following consistent systematic procedures.
Furthermore, he became one of the major contractors, and made great profits, but he remained austere in his life, humble in his behavior, not arrogant towards people, and he did not like pretense and pomp. He hated extravagance and extravagance, and he was not inclined to luxury.
Furthermore, he did not change any of the habits he inherited from his family in “Bouchamma”, his hometown in Gabès, regarding eating, sitting, and dressing.
He was a good man who renounced pretense and was silent. He helps the poor, and takes the hand of the needy. He was a pious man who did not fail to perform his religious duties, contributing to the building of mosques. Among its effects is the expansion of the shrine of Sidi Boulbaba, the mosque, and the corner of “Bouchamma”, to name a few. He used to spend on his charitable work and on building religious monuments from his personal funds, and he did not resort to the budget of the companies that he used to run, although he was the owner of them, and there is more reward for that.
His sons and daughters were brought up on these morals and on this behavior, and they took him as an example to follow. He was their ideal, and they were blessed to have such a caring and responsible father.
May Allah Most High forgive him, shower him with mercy, and grant him the highest station in Paradise with no accountability!
Tunis, March 2019