A fortnight ago legislators in the lower chamber of parliament passed the new labour law, one that is coming to plug the gaps that existed in the existing law, which was passed in 2009.

Different trade unions have welcomed the changes, including giving powers to labour inspectors and new penalties to employers who don’t effect recommendations of labour inspectors.

The understanding is that the Ministry of Labour engaged the relevant trade union and workers bodies while putting together the new law, but the cardinal cause of workers pain for a long time, one which they have demanded for the past 10 years, is that the minimum wage was still omitted in the new law.

The labour minister committed that it will soon come out with a ministerial order, but it was not enough to convince workers, who in the absence of a minimum wage had turned into beasts of burden due to how its absence has exposed them to exploitation at the hands of errant employers.

The importance of the minimum wage in an economy cannot be over emphasised, it sets the threshold for pension benefits and also acts as a key instrument in informing the taxman easily about the size of the tax base especially from the workers cluster, so its absence is a major source of discomfort.

A lot to be done

Besides that, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done, the prevalence of the new law will do little to help exploited workers, if the government itself doesn’t go out of its comfort zone to map out the different clusters of workers in the informal sector who are exploited and mistreated at their work places.

The perfect example that can illustrate that the law can be in place and exploitation continues, is the case of security guards in this country.

Despite the 2009 labour law providing that workers are supposed to work for 45 hours a week, for years many security companies have been making guards work for 84 hours a week, without compensation for the extra hours.

Many of them are grossly underpaid and others are arbitrarily fired and what is shocking is that as this exploitation continues, the Ministry of Labour has no data on security guards in the country, and they seem to be completely out of touch with their trade unions.

The ministry, which is the regulator of the sector will have to work with District labour inspectors and trade unions to keep abreast on the realities of the workers at the lower level of the economy, many of whom are informally employed.

It will also need to stand up to the powerful employers, for instance the owners of the security agencies who are powerful people in the country, but they still shouldn’t get away with exploiting workers.