By Yamikani Yapuwa
Blantyre, Mana; Minister of Labouur Vera Kamtukule on Tuesday said quality of country’s labour inspection has been lacking for a long time hence need to adopt different models of work that goes over and above things the country has been doing.
Kamtukule said this in Blantyre when she opened Strategic Compliance Training Workshop on Labor Inspection for District Labor Officers.
“As we all know, Labour Inspection is one of the core responsibilities of my Ministry, which is conducted to ensure compliance with labor laws as such critical in the workplaces for the benefit of both employers and workers.
“As we look towards MW2063, Malawi Implementation Plan-1(MIP-1), the implementation phases of our National Job Creation Strategy as well as the country program implementation of all other programmes that we have as a ministry, key issues will be labor inspections.
“Things like how do we know that we are doing the right thing, how do we know that people in the workplace are being compliant; We will get to know such information that informs the decision making through our labor inspections and the labor inspection has to be of high quality,” said Kamtukule.
She said apart from advancing enforcement of labor laws and employment laws among others, there are also need to ensure that labor inspections are sustaining compliance.
“Labor inspection is not a policing venture where people will change when you are there and go back to their old ways afterwards. If we do not address the fundamentals drivers of non-compliance and do not get to the root of non-compliance, we will not achieve our objectives and we will not achieve effective compliance.
“Compliance has to be sustained. When I go there in January, I want to see the very same things all the time; they should not change things because the minister has arrived or because inspectors are going there.
“People need to know why we are doing these things, why is it important for them to be compliant and that has to be sustained,” she said.
Mulanje District Council Labor Officer Edward Shafi said the district is doing fine in terms of labour inspection.
“As you know, Mulanje is one of the districts with so many tea estates and smallholder tea growers as such issues to do with inspections are very vital,” said Shafi.
He therefore applauded International Labor Organization and the ministry for the trainings saying it will help fix the gaps that were there hence improving work place
