Yesterday, I parted ways with ‘a friend’ for what I silently considered (in my heart) brutal theft and slavery. I felt guilty of sponsoring a devil whose deeds simply haunt the future of the world.
Guilt-ridden because I
pay handsomely for the thick delicious watermelon classes of juice they serve
me, so silly me expected that the extra dollar trickles down to those who
prepare and serve. I realized that it doesn’t happen at all, the rich woman is
a devil alive.
You get tired of being served by a disconsolate sister
or daughter. Shame thus, affects your appetite, because no amount of ‘tipping’
can change things for these poor girls. Not even trying to pay twice the cost
of a glass of juice can solve their problem; see, the economy is not good also.
So I called it quits, bitterly. That was yesterday, just here in Kampala.
My so called friend is a thief. She is evil, heartless
and greedy. Woman takes advantage of young, destitute girls. She carrots them
into coming to her premises for work and serves them pain and regrets.
She owns a hotel with; restaurant, bar, massage parlor
and others. Despite making colossal amount of money every day, she doesn’t give
her workers food. She expects the girls to attract ‘tips’ from customers to
form their eats. After months of watching, I couldn’t bare it any further
because I realized that she changes workers every week.
On first day of reporting; the young girls look bright, smooth, they look happy and flagrantly ambitious. However, they suddenly lose the oomph and register fatigue just on day two. Then they are sick, bitter and frowning like Salmonella infected chicken, by end of week.
I noticed
different faces get on service every week, then studied their deterioration, and
felt that intense emotion, thus swearing not to be back there. To hell with her
and wealth, let her go alone.
It seems that every weekend finds my friend’s workers comprehensively frustrated and looking back. Then she (my friend) opens her gate and disgorge the hungry workers off her premises without a single penny; not for transport, not a bottle of drinking water. Could this be why several fine looking girls fill up the streets at night searching for men who can pay and have?
You know what? It’s even quite difficult to help these girls out apparently because not a single law is straight forward on such a case. It’s high time our law makers looked into ways of hunting down this inhuman treatment.
Without a reference document for a job, the employee is
helpless. That’s how bad employers prick their workers, they kill evidence of employment.
Uganda’s current minimum wage is Sh6,000 which came
into force in 1984, but things have totally changed and there is urgent need to
review it so as to solve the infinite rates and the open-ended terms that
people like my friend use to abuse our sisters and daughters.
There was a Shs75,000 figure for unskilled workers recommended by the Minimum Wage Advisory Council in 1995 but not enforced to-date. Another 2013 attempt in which MP Arinaitwe Rwakajara proposed a Shs250,000 minimum, equally plummeted. The latest was a suggestion of Shs130,000 by the Minimum Wages Advisory Board in 2015 and debates on it rebooted in 2021, it’s still hanging.
There is need
to make these good suggestions practical so as to reduce on exploitation of young
people by unscrupulous employers. The other good thing to do is to continue
being more positive and welcoming to foreign investors so that our children can
get more decent jobs.
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