Justice is 'An Investment in Human Dignity'
Justice "is not a cost - it's an investment in human dignity without which there can be no development of our country", declared Mozambican Labour Minister Helena Taipo on Monday.
Mozambican Labour Minister Helena Taipo was speaking at the opening of a national seminar on the country's labour legislation, bringing together labour ministry inspectors from across the country, provincial prosecutors, and presiding judges of provincial courts.
The seminar, Taipo said, was taking place, "when the country is facing a large number of labour disputes, in which workers' most elementary rights are violated, such as the right to a wage, to social security, to health and to decent working conditions".
Labour justice "is one of the basic pillars of the development of our economy and of the struggle against absolute poverty", she declared, warning that "the prodigious growth of wealth generated by companies cannot be achieved at the cost of disrespecting workers' legitimate rights".
The new labour law that took effect last year, Taipo continued, stipulates that "labour justice and peace should be the rule in relations between employers and workers".
It also stressed the need for "extrajudicial solutions to labour disputes" - which should avoid the channeling of all labour conflicts to the law courts which are quite unable to cope with them all in good time.
The new law, Taipo said, insists that there must be attempts to mediate in disputes before they are submitted to arbitration panels or to the courts. The idea was "to end the congestion in the labour sections of the courts and to contribute to the rapid solution of conflicts".
But she warned that the mere existence of laws is not enough - there must also be "mechanisms that guarantee they will be implemented, since the merit of a law lies in its applicability to daily life, and its potential to meet the requirements of those it is aimed at".
Taipo wanted to see cooperation between the Labour Inspectorate, the Attorney-General's Office and the courts. This, she believed, would remove the obstacles to implementing the labour law and would "increase the trust of citizens in our institutions".
Labour justice, she stressed, could not be achieved without commitment from the top leadership of the Mozambican legal system. - (AIM NEWS)