The Parliamentary Forum on Labour, Decent Employment and Productivity on Tuesday recommended that a law be put in place to regulate labour migration. The decision was approved by the deputy speaker of parliament, Thomas Tayebwa, during a one-day conference, held at Kampala Imperial Royale Hotel on Tuesday.
“I think it’s high time parliament moved a private members bill to put in place a law that regulates and governs labour migration in Uganda,”said Tayebwa, while addressing participants at the forum as Guest of Honor.
Rt Hon. Tayebwa said issues of employment are very critical and require regulation to protect employees from exploitation by their employers, both in and outside Uganda. He said trust between employers and employees should be enhanced if business growth is to be realized.
Regarding employees and employers’ relationship, Mr. Tayebwa called on the employers to endeavor to remit Pay As You Earn (PAYE) taxes and employees’ contributions to National Social Security (NSSF) to help them during their retirement age.
He advised employees to invest their meagre salary in meaningful business ventures to realize profits that will benefit them when they are out of active employment.
“About 61 percent of US employed citizens invest their money in the stock exchange, where for example, an employee who invests $US 1000 to Amazon gets $US 2 Million after 10 years,”he said.
Resatul Islam, International Organization for Migration (IOM) representative at the conference, said there is a need to protect the rights of migrant workers by curbing down on human traffickers for labour exploitation abroad.
He enumerated ways in which human traffickers use to lure their victims to include; use of force, fraud or deceptive conviction and payment or abuse of position of vulnerability, with the aim of exploiting them among others.
The Minister of State for Youth and Children Affairs, Sarah Mateke reiterated the need for stakeholders in the protection of migrant workers and to respect existing laws on labour externalization. She said the Labour externalization program is one of Uganda’s foreign exchange earners and needs to be protected.
The conference was organized in partnership with the Belgium Embassy, IOM, Enabel and the Government of Uganda.
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