By Bampia Bundu
The Assistant Inspector General of Police in the Northern Region, Suluku Conteh has called on the Ministry of Labor to deploy labor officer to Bombali district because his officers are facing serious challenges handling strikes.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Politico AIG Suluku Conteh said that “day in day out” they are being called by workers or management of mining companies in relation to strike actions. Conteh said all they could do as a force is to “mediate between the workers and their employers to ensure sanity between workers and management of mining companies”.“We are police officers, our responsibility is to maintain law and order in the region, we can mediate but we can’t properly interpret the labor laws, because we are not professionals to handle issues of labor laws".
He called on the Minister of Labor to act fast because the northern region has almost all the big mining companies and there are thousands of workers from all parts of the county with several more searching for jobs.
The regional police boss said the labor Ministry in the region is not functional as there is no labor officer in the whole of Makeni town. Conteh maintained that when strikes occur "we have to resort to forming a Stakeholders’ Committee comprising senior authorities in the region to mediate…”
According to Isatu Kamara a senior stakeholder in the district, the people are faced with serious challenges to resolve labor issues noting that they have expressed these concerns many times but the ministry appears to have done nothing to deal with the problem.
She appealed to the president to see how the government can help in that direction because “their children are being maltreated by mining companies in the region”.
A Deputy Commissioners of labor Mr. Kallon said the ministry is understaffed. "We had requested the Human Resource Management Office (HRMO) to provide 10 (ten) labor officers for the ministry and all we got was 6 (six) for the whole country".
Kallon said the labor officer attached to Makeni died about three years ago and assured that his ministry is working on modalities to get more labor officers.
(C) Politico 05/01/13
