By Our Reporters
Oct 24, 2003 - Monitor
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** Tri-Star shuts out ministers KAMPALA - More than 200 female workers at a local textile firm who were sacked on Wednesday spent the night at Parliament yesterday, and vowed not to leave until their problems are solved. The young women (popularly referred to as Agoa girls), who spoke to The Monitor by phone, said they were going to sleep on chairs in the TV room in Parliament buildings. MPs were by press time organising food for the girls and a place to bathe. The strike was ended on Tuesday afternoon after anti-riot police led by the Inspector General of Police, Maj. Gen. Katumba Wamala, broke into the dormitories. However, a meeting between the management of the textile firm, Apparels Tri-Star, and labour officials fell through before the textile bosses announced that they were sacking all their production staff. The company employs more than 1,000 girls. A law firm working for the workers successfully applied for a court injunction yesterday stopping the dismissals. It followed an application filed by one of the girls, Ms Zauja Biryeri, as well as Uganda Textile, Garments, Leather & Allied Workers Union together with the National Organisation of Trade Unions, Notu. The application was lodged through Barya, Byamugisha & Co. Advocates. The order restrains the company from sacking the girls without paying all their dues, benefits and repatriation costs. It also stops the sackings until a separate civil suit filed yesterday by the girls against the company is disposed of. In the civil suit, the girls want to be paid, among others, overtime allowances which they say accrues from working 13, instead of the legally accepted 8-hour days. However, policemen deployed at the Tri-Star factory in Bugolobi, Kampala, stopped Workers MP Bruno Pajobo from delivering the injunction to the Tri-Star boss, Mr V. Kananathan. Efforts by several senior government officials to speak to the Tri-Star management were in vain. Mr Sam Bitangaro, the state minister for Gender, Labour and Social Development, tried unsuccessfully to speak to Kananathan. Government officials who declined to be named in this report said the matter was passed on to Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi, but that he, too, had failed to resolve the impasse - with the textile managers reportedly claiming that they would only speak to President Yoweri Museveni, who helped them set up shop. Kananathan was unavailable for comment, as was Bitangaro. Ms Mary Okurut, the presidential spokeswoman, said State House has been too busy making preparations for the on-going Inter-Governmental Authority on Development summit to think about the Agoa crisis. "I can't talk about that now, we are having visiting Presidents so it is a bad time," she said. When the girls realised that they were not going to be let back into the factory, they marched to Parliament in the afternoon and camped in the gardens. Matembe speaks They were met there by another Workers MP, Mr Martin Wandera - with many of them either sobbing or wiping tears. Wandera told the girls to remain calm while they tried to solve the matter with the Labour ministry. Shortly after, outspoken women rights activist and former minister of Ethics and Integrity, Ms Miria Matembe, arrived and advised the girls to seek audience with either the President's Office or those who recruited them. "There must be a better way of sending you away; do they expect you to go sell yourselves on the streets?" Matembe said. "Go back to the factory and only leave on instructions of the President like you came." Mr Aggrey Awori, the MP for Samia Bugwe North, who also spoke to the girls, told them where to vent their anger. "Do you know your President?" he asked. "Yes," they chorused. "Then where does he work?" he added, drawing murmurs from the girls. "Do you see that building?" he asked, pointing to one of the wings of Parliament, where Mr Museveni has an office. "Yes," they chorused again. "That's where he works; go there and ask him why he brought you." MP Pajobo told The Monitor last evening that he, and his colleagues, would camp with the girls throughout the night. Officials comment Two senior officials on Agoa were divided over the way forward in the matter. "We gave them the skills and it's a free market; they can walk out and go elsewhere if they are not satisfied," she said. But the Senior Presidential Adviser on Agoa, Mr Onegi Obel, warned that Tri-Star would be punished if investigations find the firm at fault. "What I see today with the strikes is a case of poor management of human resource," he said. Reported by Simon Kasyate, |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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