Observation (CEACR) - adopted 2001, published 90th ILC session (2002)

The Committee notes the information contained in the Government’s reports for the period ending May 2001, and the statistics attached in the annex.

1. Wages, terms and conditions of service and means of transport of labour inspectors (Articles 10, 11, paragraph 1(b), and 16 of the Convention). The Committee notes the difficulties of a material nature and the inadequacy of human resources facing the provincial departments of the labour inspectorate. Emphasizing, as it did in paragraph 214 of its 1985 General Survey on labour inspection, the economic and social value of labour inspection and the social cost of reducing its effectiveness, the Committee draws the Government’s attention to the need to secure for the institution, in the distribution of the national budget, the priority that corresponds to its objective. Human resources and material needs must be determined taking into account the various branches of economic activity, the number of enterprises and their geographical distribution, as well as the number of workers employed, the means of communication and the public transport available. The Committee places particular emphasis on the need to secure transport facilities for labour inspectors, without which they are not able to inspect workplaces as thoroughly and as frequently as set out in Article 16. It requests the Government to take all the appropriate measures to improve and develop the means of action of the labour inspectorate, to provide information on any progress achieved or any difficulties encountered and to furnish statistical data regularly concerning the staffing and geographical distribution of labour inspection services, and the means of transport available to such services in their respective jurisdictions.

2. Labour inspection and child labour. In reply to the Committee’s general observation in 1999 on the role of labour inspection in combating child labour, the Government refers to the recent ratification of the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182). The Committee hopes that the Government will not fail to take measures to enable labour inspectors to participate actively in combating unlawful work by children and to inform the competent authorities of the situation in the country in this respect.

The Committee is addressing a request directly to the Government on other points.