The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has launched in Accra, a two-year project that seeks to promote fair recruitment practices in the labour migration space in Ghana and other countries.
Named the Integrated Programme on Fair Recruitment Initiative III (FAIR III) the project is expected to also expand safe and regular labour migration opportunities globally by the time it ends in 2025.
The ILO is collaborating with the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations to implement the initiative which is the third and final phase of the FAIR initiative already running in Cote d’Ivoire and Tunisia.
It is being funded by the partners including the Swiss Development Cooperation, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Ebert Foundation.
At the launch on Thursday, the sector Minister, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, said the objectives of the project were in line with the mandate of the ministry to ensure that all workers get fair and decent work.
He said the ministry had rolled out several programmes to ensure fairness as part of efforts to achieve the sustainable development goal on decent work and global compact on migration.
He said labour migration had benefits for both destination and home countries and added that these benefits could be realised if migration was managed properly.
Mr Awuah said just like other countries, Ghana also received migrant workers, mostly in the informal sectors of construction and agriculture, thus the need to ensure that all migrant workers were treated justly.
Noting that there were gaps in the labour migration space, he said, the project would help sanitise the sector and help build on activities being done under Ghana’s labour migration.
The Ambassador of Switzerland to Ghana, Simone Giger, said if labour migration was done in an ethical manner, host and destination countries as well as the migrants would reap its benefits.
However, she said due to the absence of proper management of labour migration, migrants were often abused while some were asked to work many years to offset high cost of recruitment.
She called on all stakeholders to work together to make labour migration safe, pledging her country’s commitment to the programmes and activities under the FAIR initiative.
In a presentation on the project, the Project Manager of the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work Branch of the ILO, Gaëla Roudy Fraser of the ILO said the project had four components.
They include thematic research, where there would be a study on definition of fees and cost, development unfair recruitment indicators, behaviour change impact assessment and access to justice.
She said there would be outreach, dissemination and capacity building; partnerships with stakeholders in education and collaborate with the media through global media competitions, and capacity building workshops.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
