Shamukuni calls for labour law review
The Minister of Employment, Labour Productivity and Skills Development, Machana Shamukuni told Parliament on Tuesday that there is a need to review the current labour laws. He said this is because the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the labour relations landscape of the country and the world over.
“The pandemic brought about numerous lessons for the world of work and this calls for a shift in the manner in which we execute our mandate. Despite the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Botswana continues to enjoy harmonious labour relations. From April 2021 to date, 6,467 trade disputes were reported, in addition to 951 trade disputes brought forward from the previous year, bringing the total to 7,418. There has been a decrease in the number of trade disputes reported compared to 7,299 disputes reported in the previous year [2020]. The decrease is attributed to COVID-19 disruptions,” the minister said.
He, however, revealed that although a decrease in trade disputes was realised, the statutory turnaround time of 30 days for mediation and arbitration of trade disputes was not achieved as customers could not access services on time.
He said there is a need to invest in digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation to facilitate online case management (online registration, service and allocation of cases and virtual mediation/arbitration).
He said his ministry is working with SmartBots to develop a case management system to ease delays in the dispute resolution processes. He said they are to engage part-time mediators/arbitrators to deal with the workload to bring the cases within the statutory turnaround time. Concerning labour inspections, he said 180 were conducted against a target of 3,420. The low rate of inspections is attributed to COVID-19 disruptions, he said. In addition, he said contraventions noted during the inspections included failure to insure workers, failure to keep records, and delayed payments.
Shamukuni added that his ministry continues to intensify public education on labour laws, through the media, expos, and workshops to improve compliance.
He continued: “It is, therefore, critical to strengthen and capacitate the labour inspectorate to reach out to more industries in order to ensure compliance to labour laws and prevention of disputes. In order to address the persistent problem of contraventions, the ongoing labour law review has proposed an upward revision of penalties.” Shamukuni said this is expected to serve as a deterrent for violation of labour laws.