By Glory
The Pursuit of Decent Work in Malawi. Is it a possible future reality, or an elusive dream?
According to the ILO, decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men.
The date 7TH October 2019 marked the 12th World day for Decent Work and EGISA commemorated it by hosting a SheTalks Decent work forum in partnership with ActionAid, Malawi Congress of Trade Unions and Youth Activista. The aim of the event was to accommodate open dialogue that promoted the decent work agenda with over 40 young women works from different sectors. With support from partner organizations, the event was done by creating a dialogue platform that included presentations to inform young working women about their right to decent work and the role government is meant to play. It also allowed them to share their grievances in their daily work life. The platform provided an opportunity for the collection of demands from the young women workers which will be articulated into mechanisms to advance policy advocacy and to raise awareness.
This year’s theme was “Investing in care for gender equality”. The theme was designed to call onto governments to increase the investment in care to generate economic growth, to accommodate the growing young population and to help overcome gender barriers by supporting the participation of women in wealth-creating activities (source International Trade Union Confederation website). This was why the SheTalks Decent work forum’s overall aim was push government to make decent work the center of government’s actions by presenting a communique to them with the demands of those who attended the event.
Malawi is party to the ILO’s Conventions and has its own extensive Decent Work Country Programme whose purpose is to coordinate, harmonize and align technical assistance and financial resources around an achievable set of priority outcomes related to the promotion of the ILO’s global Decent Work Agenda. However, the reality that exist is a Programme whose first phase concluded with very minimal progress and achievements in addressing decent work deficits. In addition to this, there are serious gaps in the Malawi’s legal framework in supporting decent work especially one that is gender responsive. As a result, the adopted ILO’s convention 190 and 189 have had little binding effect and no specific guidelines.
In relation to this, there is little done to enforce the decent work standards. In cases where victims report, corruption and bribery tends to leave the socially and economically disadvantage worse off than before. As with most issues in society, the most vulnerable groups bear the largest burden. Women tend to suffer the most because of the existing deficits to decent work.
The SheTalks Decent work forum revealed that women experienced a lot of challenges such as gross treatment, sexual harassment, psychological abuse, unfair wage cuts, wages under the minimum wage and societal expectations that limit their ability to participate in economic activity.
One interesting discussion point during the event was on what we can do as citizens to try to improve our situations. The most important point was to push for government to create the suitable environment that provides the means for both men and women to have decent work. It is the Government’s obligation to fulfil the economic rights of all its citizens. There is need for the provision of adequate social protection services and gender responsive public services. Our Government must work on designing their public services in a way that relieves vulnerable groups.
There is also need for government to cover this in their budget. On the citizen’s perspective, we must ensure that we are engaging and participating in the budget process because without adequate funding, all are efforts become nothing but futile gestures.
As citizens we must push policy makers to provide clear stipulation on decent work in order to make the international conventions more binding. For most of the decent work deficits, they would be resolved if Government could ensure employers are adhering to the standard requirements.
Another important point discussed at the forum was that as a working women, we have the power to speak out and report against our employers. The government has an Ndiulula organization for workers to complain about unfair treatment at work. However, before reporting women should make sure to have collected adequate evidence. For example, having video footage, voice recordings, text messages and witnesses. Remember, only by breaking the silence can you begin to start fixing the problems that exist.
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