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** Tri-Star shuts out ministers
** High Court
stops sackings
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 girls went on strike on Monday, protesting low pay and
poor working conditions, before barricading themselves inside their
dormitories the following day.
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.
Justice Okumu Wengi of the High Court
issued the injunction.
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."
By
press time last night, the girls were still camped at Parliament and
had vowed not to leave.
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.
The Presidential Assistant on Agoa, Ms Susan Muhwezi,
who revealed that Tri-Star has been receiving about $200,000 (Shs
400 million) a week from its exports, said the girls were free to
go.
"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.
He promised to do everything within his
means to ensure that the girls are reinstated and their grievances
settled.
Reported by Simon Kasyate,
Lominda Afedraru,
Alex B. Atuhaire & Henry Ssali
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