Ministry introduces online system to monitor workers

The Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development has introduced an online system to monitor workers across the country so as to follow up on their safety and health while on duty.
The commissioner in-charge of occupational health, Mr Francis Odong Gimoro, said the system will cater for all workers registered with the Gender ministry.
“Since we are all joining the digital world, it’s very expensive for a person to travel more than 400 kilometres to Kampala to pick forms to do an assessment and then come back to pick the certificate of registration,” he told journalists during an annual symposium on human rights in Kampala yesterday.

The meeting was organised by the Uganda Association of Women Lawyers FIDA-Uganda.
Mr Odong added that the ministry introduced the system because the manual inspection was tiresome and need a lot of manpower.
According to Mr Odong, the platform will also help the ministry to know the location of the workplace so that they can guide users to report issues that affect their stations or become whistle-blowers.

“We will rely on workplaces to give us information to start investigations. It is the duty of workers to know their rights and inform the inspectors on what is happening at their workplace,” he said.
Ms Elizabeth Kemigisha, the advocacy manager from FIDA, said employees and employers still face violations, adding that the number of cases is overwhelming.
“We started an initiative with Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) labour office to respond to some of the increasing numbers to violations, most of which were women and young people,” she said.
Ms Kemigisha added that these numbers have continued to grow because they register more than 100  new cases monthly and they do not have the capacity to handle them in a short time,” she said.

The chairperson general of the National Organisation of Trade Unions (Notu), Mr Usher Wilson Owere, called for strengthening of labour administration.
“We want a standalone ministry where the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Security are together since they all address issues affecting workers,” he said.
“The Gender ministry is supposed to have labour offices in all districts with inspectors but they are very few and this affects workers across the country,” he said.
Mr Owere called for empowerment of Gender officials to effectively inspect workers and ensure safety and rule of law.