By Melvin Tejan-Mansaray
The need to protect citizens of any country to get jobs in work places is a fundamental requirement of not only trade unions but Government also. That is why Lansana Mohamed Dumbuya, the Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Security has called for the need to ensuring that the popularization of the National Labour Migration Policy and the Overseas Employment and Migration Act, 2019 across all the districts in the country must be supported.
The Minister acknowledges that there is high unemployment rate in the country but calls on people to make themselves relevant by learning the required skills to be able to challenge the expatriates taking their jobs.
This doesn’t mean that foreigners cannot come and work in Sierra Leone but he advised that the law protects the right of the citizen to get job opportunities. Except other jobs that cannot be occupied professionally due to lack of qualification academically that they can get the liberty to do so.
To ensure that jobs are occupied by Sierra Leoneans with the requisite skills, qualification, and those without skills and qualification, the Deputy Minister said that TVET is good to capacitate young graduates with relevant skills.
The Local Content Act also guarantees that Sierra Leoneans are to occupy senior, middle and lower management levels with a certain percentage while expatriates must present their succession plan, training plans for skills transfer to citizens to take after them.
The Act 2019 lays emphasis that Sierra Leoneans travelling to other countries such as Qatar, Lebanon, Arab Emirates, America, UK, etc will benefit from opportunities of the Act.
There are challenges, though, but with the support of partners like EU, ECOWAS, IOM, Labour Ministry, a blueprint that guides Government to look at the people and the challenges to address them. The policy itself looks at social protection rights – that everyone ones’ rights must be guaranteed with social protection either as migrants or emigrants.
Launched in August 2018, the blueprint will ensure that the people – the print and electronic media, key stakeholders like TOCU, Immigration, Local Authorities, Social Welfare Ministry, etc about aware about what is contained inside the policy in order to send the right information to the people.
The propose of this Act is not just to have a policy but a law that has been drafted and now tabled in Parliament for enactment. “We are calling on our partners to present these documents so people know that there are jobs and steps that we have taken, and we hope that once the law is enacted we will move to all the districts to let people know that there is a law to curb irregular migration in this country,” By Lansana Sesay, Information Officer Ministry of Labour and Social Security.
