The Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH) has criticised the country's trade unions for what it regards as their inability or unwillingness to deal with labour disputes.
"There are unions in Mozambique that would be the proper bodies to deal with labour conflicts", claimed LDH chairperson Alice Mabota on Saturday. "But unfortunately the unions are inadequate, incapable, non-functioning, or become accomplices out of fear".
Presenting the League's annual report for 2003 to an LDH general meeting, Mabota said that in the entire country the LDH itself had handled 1,370 labour disputes.
She said the LDH was proud to have taken 164 of these cases to court, where the workers won 95 of them and lost 11. The remaining 58 cases are still before the courts.
Other labour problems were solved without recourse to the law. Thus in Maputo city, the LDH claims to have helped solve 133 labour disputes through mediation.
Mabote also expressed serious concern at the violation of human rights inside Mozambican prisons.
"Prisoners are increasingly deprived of their rights, particularly as regards contacts with their family and with lawyers, health care, food and decent hygiene".
She noted that on its prison visits the LDH had found minors incarcerated in the country's jails, as well as people held beyond the legal limit for preventive detention.
Mabota said the LDH had also received a large number of complaints from women whose partners refused to accept paternity of their children, much less pay any maintenance.
Fonte: AIM
