On June 22, 2023, the Minister of Gender, Labour, and Social Development, Hon. Betty Amongi, launched a key initiative aimed at scaling up compliance and expanding coverage for social security among companies contracted by UNRA to undertake road construction.
According to Amongi, there is currently a labor-capital conflict resulting in the exploitation of workers, and she stressed the importance of establishing fair income and capital, aimed at increasing the workers income in the national income distribution.
“At least one-third (1/3rd) of the subsistence workers are excluded from the employment statistics deliberately. In very simple terms, this is exploitation or slavery. This is happening today in Uganda, and one of the sectors where it is most prevalent is construction,” Amongi said.
Amongi added that when it comes to casual labour, the absence of formal contracts means that many workers are employed but left without work for significant periods of the time, and they are denied benefits for forgoing time they would have spent being productive.
During his speech, Patrick Ayota, the NSSF Acting Managing Director, noted that the Great Depression was as a result of the stock market crash in 1929. Businesses faltered, and unemployment skyrocketed. Banks failed, and many Americans lost their life savings, leaving them impoverished with no work and no savings.
“To recover from the Great Depression, the US government spent billions on public works projects, including roads. These not only created inter-connectivity between regions but, more importantly, created jobs,” Ayota said.
Ayota added that the Fund intends to grow social security coverage across the country from 10% to 50% by 2035 by increasing willingness to save through education and awareness, partnerships that target large groups of workers (e.g., UNRA leveraging technology to make the process easier), and law enforcement.
