Zambia
Massive child labour in Zambia denounced

afrol News, 25 October - A new trade union report denounces the massive use of child labour in Zambia and a significant deterioration of workers' rights in the country. Also trade union rights are massively and systematically being violated, the report notes. 

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) today made public its newest Zambia report, produced to coincide with the 23-25 October WTO review of that country's trade policy. The syndicalists in this report condemn "serious and widespread" usage of child labour as well as deterioration in workers' basic rights. 

- With children working in dangerous occupations including portering, street begging and domestic labour, child labour is a widespread problem in Zambia, ICFTU says. "In contravention of the ILO's two core conventions on child labour, children are still toiling in even the worst forms of child labour such as small scale mining operations, agriculture and stone crushing."

The UN labour agency, ILO, has published figures that estimate that over 550,000 children were working in 2001. 85 percent of these were involved in the so-called "worst forms of child labour." According to the ICFTU report, "as the number of Zambians dying of HIV-AIDS continues to increase, the numbers of orphans, and the number of households headed by a child, increases as well. Nearly all of these children are working."

Neither were children safe from the perils of prostitution. The report states that "there are reports of forced prostitution [in Zambia], particularly of children, of the trafficking of women and children to neighbouring countries for the purposes of prostitution, and of combatants from neighbouring Angola kidnapping Zambians and taking them back to Angola to perform various forms of forced labour."

In terms of the respect of trade union rights, the report is no less critical. Many officials of municipal workers' trade unions had been dismissed for union activities. In just one incident cited in the report, "the General Secretary of the electricity workers' union was recently made to face disciplinary proceedings by the public sector electricity company for reporting the plunder of the company's resources by management." 

Basic workers' rights were also deteriorating in the private sector, including by multinationals present in the country. The multinational hotel chain Sun Hotels had "refused to pass on a ten percent service charge to its employees, which is mandated by Zambian law. Workers protesting this violation were disciplined," the report says. "New workers in some private sector companies, particularly multinationals, are asked to sign a statement choosing a job over a union, and those who are not prepared to forsake their right to unionise are not hired."

And although the right to collective bargaining was recognised in law, and collective bargaining was relatively widespread in practice, a deteriorating situation as regards violation of basic workers' rights in the private sector, including by multinationals present in the country is also reported.

Women were reported to be severely disadvantaged in both employment and education in Zambia, including in terms of lower remuneration and inferior conditions of employment for working women. In addition, Zambians continue to catch HIV-AIDS in ever increasing numbers, and those infected face discrimination in employment as a result of their condition.

- Poverty is rife in Zambia, explained Collin Harker, author of the report, "and the situation for the majority of workers is dire. Without concerted efforts on behalf of the Zambian government to respect the eight core labour standards to which they have repeatedly agreed and with the scourge of AIDS looming large, improvement for the beleaguered population looks distinctly far off."

The ICFTU has only one affiliate in Zambia, the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions, with a membership of 250,000. While only slightly more than ten percent of the potential workforce is recognised as formally employed, approximately 60 percent of those in formal employment are members of a trade union.

Sources: Based on ICFTU & afrol archives

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