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afrol News, 6 February - Unions today condemn the "deplorable situation faced by working people in Malawi," where child labour, discrimiation and misery prevail. Union rights are severely curtailled, according to a new report. A new report released by the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICFTU) has condemned the deplorable situation faced by working people in Malawi and challenged the government to meet its obligations to protect its citizens. Despite having ratified all of the eight ILO conventions on core labour standards, the situation for the hundreds of thousands of child labourers, women and for the majority of workers in general, "remains as miserable as ever." The report states, "in view of restrictions on the trade union rights of plantation workers and workers in EPZ's [Export Precessing Zones], and problems with anti-union discrimination and child labour, determined measures are needed to comply with the commitments Malawi has accepted." The ICFTU evaluation report was written to coincide with the WTO trade policy review of Malawi being conducted in Geneva on 6 and 8 February, and is the latest in a series of such reports issued by the ICFTU. The Malawi Congress of Trade Unions (MCTU) is the ICFTU's affiliated organisation in Malawi. Plantations of export crops, including tobacco, tea and sugar, account for approximately three quarters of all exports earnings in Malawi. The tobacco plantations are the single biggest plank in Malawi's trade strategy, and yet according to the ICFTU report, "its workers face severe poverty and poor working conditions." An agreement has been signed between the Tobacco Tenants and Allied Workers' Union, the MCTU and the Tobacco Association of Malawi (TAMA) to recognise the unions, to encourage collective bargaining and to eliminate child labour. - Yet child labour in these areas continues unabated, ICFTU observes. The report states that, "more than twenty per cent of the workforce on commercial plantations, especially tobacco plantations, are children. Much child labour on these commercial plantations is hidden because the tenant farming system encourages the whole family to work." - Many children are kept from school in order to contribute to the family growing effort, and smaller children are often kept from school in order to perform the domestic tasks that the parents and older siblings are not available to perform, the report says. "The ILO estimates that over 440,000 children between the ages of 10 and 14 are economically active in Malawi, which constitutes over thirty per cent of this age group." ICFTU maintnis that bonded labour, although in breach of the Malawi Constitution and ILO core conventions, still persists, and is especially prevalent on tobacco plantations. "Tobacco tenants have exclusive arrangements, often non-written, with the estate owners to sell their crop and to buy inputs such as fertiliser, seed and often food." With regard to the ILO core labour standards of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, despite the fact that Malawi has signed both conventions, "little over ten percent of the workforce operate under formal conditions and have recourse to the various instruments of labour legislation." - Poverty is rife in Malawi, said ICFTU Secretary General Guy Ryder, "and the situation for the majority of workers is dire. Without concerted efforts on behalf of the Malawi government to respect the core labour standards to which they have repeatedly agreed, improvement for the beleaguered population looks distinctly far off." Sources: Based on ICFTU and afrol archives
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