Celebrating Desperate Laborers’ Conditions On May Day [Archives:2000/18/Business & Economy]

By: Mahyoub Al-Kamali
Observing May Day in a poor country like Yemen is associated with many difficulties and hardships facing laborers due to low levels of income and an increase in unemployment rate for over 40% of the volume of manpower. The average labor age people is between 15-64 who are rating 46.2% of the population.
Marking this day and showing solidarity with the country’s workers and delivering speeches will not end their misery and is not what they need. They need an agenda of actions and tangible solutions for their concerns and consistent suffering.
It is then advisable that this celebration should be an opportunity for the government review its policy towards laborers and their rights, the top of which is their right to get job opportunities.
In Yemen, statistics offer a scary and menacing picture of this problem. There is about 50% of women at the age of 15-64 working with low productivity rate estimated at 15.6%. The rate of supporting children up to 14 is from 9-10 persons.
Thus, what accomplishments for workers are we celebrating of amidst he suffering of thousands of working families that are lacking of enough health and other necessary services?
Laborers in the Private sector are not better either. There are no laws providing them with necessary protection. Moreover, they work under very hard circumstances for working hours exceeding 10 in return for low wages.
The economic reform program adopted by the authority since 1995 has played a major role in increasing the volume of unemployment, decreasing the average of income and emergence of child labor phenomenon. Thus, celebrating the day has a tragic characteristic at a time a large section of workers is living below the line of poverty. The second Gulf war has also contributed to redoubling the problems of workers and affected negatively the life of the work force.
If this celebration is meant to do something good for this miserable sector of the society, therefore, the authority should work out plans dealing with the heart of the problem, a policy tackling the problem poverty and unemployment by building big development projects to absorb as many as possible numbers of unemployed people.
The situation may even get worse if the Saudi government cancels the sponsor system which will mean that about 400,000 laborers are going to be back home. Consequently, this will create more problems for Yemeni laborers.
To make a long story short, the occasion of May Day is an opportunity for the unemployed to speak loud their suffering so that our officials do not cover things up by having a get-together and deliver some speeches of shallow and empty words we have become fed up with.

——
[archive-e:18-v:2000-y:2000-d:2000-05-01-p:./2000/iss18/b&e.htm]