MAY DAY CELEBRATIONS: GOVT COMES TO THE PARTY

NHLANGANO – After a long absence from Workers Day commemorations hosted by TUCOSWA, government came to the party yesterday.

In the past few years, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security shunned the event hosted by the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA).
However, yesterday the Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, Thulani Mkhaliphi represented the Minister, Makhosi Vilakati.
The minister said May Day celebrations had a long history locally and internationally. He said what stood to be a major success of celebrating May Day was pitching the rights of workers and the appropriate level of building bridges between workers and government.

Reinforce

He said another thing that needed to be done was to reinforce interconnections linking workers and business as well as business with government in a very unique way where each of the partners shall stand independent of each other but be connected by a common purpose. The common purpose should be that of creating common wealth to generate jobs, grow the economy for better wages and future employment opportunities for the youth.

Through Mkhaliphi, the minister  said: “This task calls for the tripartite between government, workers and business to be firm, honest and unselfish.
“It is the character of the relationship between these parties that will determine the speed at which the economy regenerates itself and creates an environment where workers’ interests, business interests and of course government’s interests will thrive.”

He added that it was their firm belief that this May Day celebration will be considered very successful and fitting the theme if they would pause to assess the posture of their relationship, fix it where such was required but never attempt to nix it. He said they both needed each other in this space and neither of them could exist without the other.

“Our appeal to the leadership of the federation and of course all member unions leaders is to teach and educate the membership about the intricacies of the labour space, tripartite relationship and the responsibilities of the labour movement to this relationship.  Government also commits to continuously teach and educate all its operatives and agencies about the tripartite relationship and their responsibilities to keeping it intact and firm.”

On that note, the minister said high in their internal organs teachings and awareness raising were the founding principles and practice of effective social dialogue and respect of law as well as other supportive labour space management instruments such as the Code of Good Practice.

Economy

He said if they believed workers would continue to support government’s plans to recover the economy and create new jobs in the private sector, this required workers to bring to the table creative ideas on how new business operations could set shop in the country and existing ones expand to create new and additional jobs. To achieve this, he said the labour movement certainly had to send the correct signals and messages to international investors and international markets, who wanted to do business with Eswatini and be ambassadors of new investment in the country.

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