Maravi

Mwaliteta explains ‘More money in your pockets'

Mwaliteta explains ‘More money in your pockets'
By Edwin Mbulo in Livingstone
Tue 27 Mar. 2012, 12:59 CAT

SOUTHERN Province minister Obvious Mwaliteta has explained that the more money in your pockets promise meant creating an enabling environment to allow individuals make more money to sustain livelihood.

And International Labour Organisation (ILO) director Martin Clemensson said major economic activities in Zambia were informal as 90 per cent of the country's labour force was in the informal economy.

In a speech read on his behalf by Southern Province deputy permanent secretary Alfred Chingi at the dissemination workshop on the Law Growth Nexus II Project (LGN) at Chrismar Hotel, Mwaliteta said the PF did not mean it would be dishing out money to people.

"The government is committed to job creation and I'm delighted to learn that the ultimate beneficiaries of the Law Growth Nexus II Project are owner-managers of growth-oriented micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMES) and their workers," Mwaliteta said.

Mwaliteta appealed to local entrepreneurs to enhance productivity and aim for world-class processes and systems so that their products and services compete on the global market.

And Clemensson said the majority workers in small businesses do not have social protection or basic rights compared to those that work in government.

"Zambia Business Survey of 2012, the characteristics of SMEs in Zambia is such that many MSMES are more akin to home-based, income-generated activities than to clearly structured businesses. Most MSMES are in rural areas (81 per cent), and operate agriculture production (70 per cent) or wholesale and retail trade," Clemensson said.

He said many entrepreneurs choose to stay informal to avoid the burden of heavy labour legislation.

[Heavy taxation too, I'll bet. - MrK]

"With this result, their workers have no social protection and more often than not, do not receive a decent wage. So the challenge is to find a balance between cost of regulation and the rights of all workers to have basic protection and decent conditions," he said.

Clemensson said the LGN project will make an input to the review of the labour code which he described as rather complex, expensive and difficult.

Labels: PF, SMEs

posted by MrK @ 8:44 PM