10 Oct 2017

Minister of Employment, Labour Productivity and Skills Development, Mr Tshenolo Mabeo has called on the African Regional Labour Administration Centre (ARLAC) senior government officials to come up with strategies that can be used to confront the numerous labour challenges in their countries.

Speaking at the beginning of a three day 13th annual meeting for the committee of senior officials responsible for labour and employment issues in Kasane on Monday, Mr Mabeo said the member countries faced challenges such as unemployment, lack of capacity to carry out labour inspections and dispute resolutions.

Mr Mabeo said the challenges required ARLAC to involve itself in a wide range of activities that included capacity building on employment creation, productivity improvement, work safety, collective bargaining, dispute prevention and settlement through social dialogue and tripartite consultation.

Mr Mabeo noted that as ministries responsible for labour, employment and manpower issues what brought them together was the pursuit of the goal of decent work, adding that where societies provided decent work and livelihoods there was a possibility to eradicate poverty, fight inequality and build peaceful and inclusive society.

He further said those qualities were central to the achievement of the African Union Agenda 2030 and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the goal on ‘Promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’.

He emphasised that the training activities of ARLAC should be geared towards strengthening the capacity to analyse the link between decent work and sustainable development and to formulate and implement strategies and approaches to make decent work for all a reality.

“ARLAC therefore needs to align its programmes, not only to meet the development goals of member states but also to ensure that through a combination of training, research, consultancy and information services, labour administrators are empowered to perform their functions with a high level of professionalism and commitment,” he said.

He said ARLAC should ensure its future activities were an expansion into current trends of labour administration.

The minister assured the meeting of Botswana’s commitment to ARLAC to ensure it remained a strong and viable organisation.

He said the country had continued to enjoy full benefits of the ARLAC membership such as the training of officials at all levels of the labour administration system.

Minister Mabeo appealed to member states in arrears with payments of ARLAC membership contributions to clear up their arrears as failure to do so would render the centre’s mission impossible.

He said ARLAC had a potential to develop into a leading institution in labour administration for both the industrialised and developing countries as there are few such in the world.

“Given the necessary support from the member countries, as well as cooperating partners there is no reason why ARLAC cannot become a centre of excellence in labour administration, which is respected not only by African countries but the whole world,” he said.

Mr Mabeo appreciated International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s expertise and funding to ARLAC saying it was a sign of the strong bond of friendship.
In his remarks, the acting director of ARLAC, Mr Locary Hlabanu said the ARLAC meeting for senior government officials responded to emerging labour issues in the region.

Mr Hlabanu said there was need for ARLAC to renew its vision and develop a training policy for member countries adding already development tools that identified performance gaps had been identified.

He said 2017 was a successful year for ARLAC as it managed to meet all the objectives that it set for itself.

Ms Hopolang Phororo of the ILO called on the ARLAC senior government officials to continuously look on how they could achieve more with less as the 2008 financial crisis resulted in many economic challenges for the world.

ARLAC is a joint regional institution for English-Speaking African countries and its objectives are amongst others to provide training and training related activities for officials of the labour administration system in member countries.

It also promotes technical cooperation between member countries by mobilising expertise and specialist consultancy . ENDS