New Bill maps path out of Kenya’s labour troubles

By FREDRICK OBURA

The Government will soon introduce a scientific way of rewarding workers as it seeks to avert cases of industrial action and improve the overall production of various goods and services.

Ministry of Labour hopes the draft Productivity and Competitiveness Commission Bill 2011 will deal with wage gaps that have fuelled strikes within the workforce, and minimise wastage in production in order to boost cross border trade.

"We are experiencing problems, which we can easily avert through better legislation. Many workers both in the public and private sectors feel cheated by their employers.... since pay cheques at the end of the month is not commensurate to their input," said Beatrice Kituyi, Permanent Secretary, in the Ministry of Labour.

She said the draft Bill would provide a scientific measure to guide employers on how to compensate employers. It will also make it mandatory for employers to consider employees’ welfare, cost of living among other factors before determining the overall pay of their workers.

"Our Bill seeks to reduce the wide gaps in wages, and cushion employees from difficulties during the hard economic times."

The Ministry of Labour recently completed the National Productivity Policy, which recommended that the productivity center of Kenya — currently operating as department within the Labor Ministry— be transformed to a commission to give it the legal status to mobilise both human and financial resources, and have the capacity to improve productivity in the country.

If passed by the Parliament, the new Bill will also create a framework for a national movement to create awareness on labour issues.

Improve performance

Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) has hailed the bill as the key to stemming frequent strikes in the country, and improving the overall performance of economy.

FKE expects the Bill to help the country improve on its production methods, and raise standards on its goods and services targeting international and regional markets.

"Low morale among the workforce is affecting our overall performance in trade. Even countries recovering from civil strife such as Rwanda are ranked more competitive than us," noted FKE Head of Research Policy and Advocacy, Lineth Oyugi .

"We need to implement better legislation to take care of the welfare of employees so as to protection from factors like rising inflation. It would improve production, minimise wastage in our industries and make our goods easily acceptable in other markets."

"There is a lot of wastage in the production process making us less competitive. We can not match countries like malaysia which have measures in place to curb wastage," she said.

Through the Bill, the federation said it expects learning institutions to re-design their training methodology so as to produce result-oriented personnel.