By Kabelo Mollo
Our government rightly comes in for a lot of flak. It is true that they are found wanting in all too many areas of service delivery. Our government regularly misses the mark, and the effects are dire.
I don’t think the governments response to COVID-19 has been great to be honest. Save for costly lockdowns on an already weary economy there has been little to show. ICU capacity remains were it was pre pandemic and the oxygen supply has been patch work at best. There are other failings too. The roads remain potholed and dangerous, the traffic lights don’t work and the same is true for street lights. Even the solar powered lights don’t function. That’s very difficult to understand.
In all the complaints laid correctly at government’s door, I’m still not convinced the factory workers issues were the fault of government. I understand the government dilly dallied when it came to putting in to effect a gazette that would mandate better minimum wages for workers. I understand that many will see that delay as the reason for factory workers being exploited and it’s possible they are right, in fact they are.
However, here is my question. Should the factory workers not have directed their considerable ire at their employers? As I understand it their dispute wasn’t just over low wages, it was also over sexual harassment as well as poor working conditions. Why must the government mandate decent working conditions, and more importantly appropriate behaviour in the work place? Why aren’t the employers being maligned for opting to wait for a gazette that says “pay your workers better” when they know such an agreement exists in principle?
In a job scarce economy nobody really wants to rock the boat, I get that. But I’m still dumbstruck that so much of our discontent was aimed at the government and not the factory owners or managers who paid poorly, were alleged to be sexually harassing some workers as well providing poor working conditions for employees.
The government is an easy target because of their myriad failings, as well as the fact that they took so long to sign in to effect the increased minimum wage gazette, but I still believe the employers got off scot-free when they weren’t entitled to. They should have been hauled over the coals as the primary protagonists in this saga.
I’m not entirely sure whether it was the unions or the employees themselves who aimed their cross hairs at a flailing government, either way those same folks need to retrain their focus on those who continue to behave like slave owners in a country that doesn’t allow that kind of behaviour. For the most part Lesotho is a Kingdom governed by law. It may not always look like it, but it is. It is high time everybody be subjected to the laws without fear and/or favour.
Somebody was telling me the importance of those jobs recently, pointing out the volumes of people who would be left jobless were the factory owners to decide Lesotho is too costly to continue an operation of that kind. Rather glibly I pointed out that those owners would be replaced by new ones who would have to respect the new dispensation. I answered more with bravado than sense but my premise was “why must we be beholden to folks who wish to exploit us?”.
With any luck this issue will be resolved now that the gazette has been signed in to effect, and perhaps the employers or managers will see it fit to act properly and provide good work conditions as well as cease any and all harassment that workers were experiencing. In a perfect world, everybody works for a fair wage, in a safe environment with decent management. The question is, why does that require a perfect world?
