Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Çerkin Dukolli attended today the roundtable organized by the Kosova Institute for Local Governance and the Foundation Fridrich Ebert Stiftung, with the theme “InstitutionalMechanisms for the Workers Protection “.
On this occasion, Deputy Minister Dukolli said that given the current situation facing the Republic of Kosova, it is very important that Kosova has established the legislative base and bylaws that give solution to this problematic, namely the institutional protection of workers in their workplaces. He underlined that in addition to the Labour Inspectorate as an executive mechanism, the National Council for Safety and Health at Work is already in full function, which has taken the necessary commitments in order to address concrete issues regarding the safety and health of workers at workplaces throughout the country.
“As the MLSW, we are currently reforming the legislation. Just let me inform you that the Draft Law on Labour Inspectorate is under procedure and is between two readings in the Parliament of the Republic of Kosova. The Labour Law Bill has passed the stage of public consultations, while the professional commission is incorporating comments and the government with this draft law will proceed by the end of November. The collective agreement is already negotiating between the social partners, therefore the professional commission has recommended to the ESC for approval the draft of this agreement, “emphasized Deputy Minister Dukolli.
He added that beyond a collective agreement between social partners at the country level, the idea is to promote social dialogue at the sector and enterprise level, referring to the specifics that the sectors have: education, health, production, services, trade etc. “We are also working on the reform of pension system legislation, we are in the phase of drafting concept papers and we are looking at opportunities to include this issue in new pension policies”, emphasized Deputy Minister Dukolli.
Despite the institutional commitments and relevant partners in the function of law enforcement, Dukolli underlined that we are still not in the right level and for this the MLSW is receiving additional commitments in all legal and executive directions. “This year the MLSW, respectively Labour Inspectorate has conducted three inspection campaigns, mainly in the construction sector. We have also conducted two awareness campaigns that deal exclusively with work, safety and health at work.’’
“The NCSHW has consistently analysed the issue of occupational safety, the occurrence of accidents that are occurring. As a result of on-site visits in both sectors, sectors with the highest risk in the workplace have been identified, such as construction, followed by energy, services, trade, etc. “.
Although the data reported in Republic of Kosova are similar to those in the region, Deputy Minister Dukolli said that for MLSW, our employers and our society in general, full respect of the employment contract, safety and health at work and minimization of informality , always remain the basis of our commitments. “In this sense, we invite all to contribute in this direction, because implementing parts of the law are all, employers and employees, while the responsibility of oversight is the state, in this case the Labor Inspectorate”. Meanwhile, regarding the number of labor inspectors, for which MLSW has always been in the attention of trade union and civil society critiques, Dukolli said to the participants of this roundtable that in 2019, we will have 15 additional inspectors and this will increase the efficiency of field work.
In this conference, many issues related to safety at work were also discussed about the investments being made through institutional contracting authorities, which were asked to set parameters to the contract beneficiaries, always in the function of protecting health and safety in work.