The Covid-19 lockdown continues to take a great toll on economies and so is on the human labor sector. Many employees are worrying about what will befall them after the whole pandemic comes to an end. However, according to human resource experts, employees who are able to work from home will be able to retain jobs during the pandemic period and probably after it.
According to experts, for the labour market to re gain ground, it will need more help than other sectors. This is majorly because majority of Uganda’s labor is employed in the informal sector. Companies, through Federation of Uganda Employers, have called for government to defer payments such as National Social Security Fund, Pay As You Earn, corporation tax, value added tax among others as one of the sought of measures that will see a quick come back with in the sector.
Some entities had started taking reflex actions towards combating the after math of the pandemic. To the extremes, some employees have already been laid off with their contracts terminated while others are pending.
With the country on lockdown for more than a month as Covid-19 pandemic continues to impair economic activity, the labour sector is one of the most hit. As early as March, government expressed concerns about job losses and the extent is yet to be known. However, in a recent Tv appearance, the president of Uganda called upon companies to first take on preliminary steps other than rushing in to lay off employees.
The executive director Federation of Uganda Employers (FUE), Mr Douglas Opio, explains how demand in varying sectors is impacting employment. Tourism, hospitality, labor export, flower firms, transport among other sectors are operating at reduced capacity.
“The situation is quite serious in the tourism and hospitality sector. Most hotels are doing pay cuts of up to 50 per cent. They will not pay in May. Companies involved in externalization of labour are sending workers on unpaid leave,” he says.
The second edition of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Monitor on Covid-19 and the World of work, released on April 7, 2020 indicates that through the massive economic disruption, the pandemic is affecting the world’s workforce consisting 3.3 billion people. Employment is in a decline both in terms of number of jobs and hours of work.
Job losses and pay cuts are required as they are seen as a way to save. Human resource experts say staff costs is the biggest expenditure for most organisations. Whereas in the short term, redundancies will be costly, there are savings in the long term.
However, regardless of the lockdown extension seeing most businesses feel the pinch, delivery businesses have witnessed an uptake in demand for their services. This has seen some Ugandan companies switch and start providing some services within their range that they had earlier not traded in. This could see the delivery services gain prominence and thus more human labour could be employed here.
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