May 1st: Covid19 Lockdown And Its Impact On Workers
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Confinement due to Covid-19 began two years ago and in Uganda, after almost two years workers have experienced unspeakable stories of suffering and despair. Many workers have lost their jobs due to the long period of confinement and unemployment levels have risen.
Uganda was one of the countries with the longest lockdown period, from 1 April 2020 to January 2022, when the economy was fully reactivated. Informal entrepreneurs had no income during this period and had to dip into their own savings, rely on government food aid or seek help from family and friends to survive. This means that during the period of closure, most workers found themselves in a subsistence economy.
The conditions of confinement have affected almost all sectors of the labour market. The number of people employed in Uganda has declined from 9 million in 2016/17 to 8.3 million in 2019/20. This led to many wage earners losing their jobs. Other workers were forced to close their businesses.
Due to the unemployment situation in the country, even before the pandemic, Uganda used to export labour to the Middle East, especially to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This was despite reports of poor working conditions. The number of Ugandan migrants has decreased from 25,363 in 2019 to 9,026 in 2020, due to the effects of the pandemic. This explains the extent of the impact of confinement on workers in Uganda and globally.
WMCW Message For Womens' Day: "The Challenge Of Going On Caring The Threads Of Life"
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International Women’s Day, that has its origin in a tragical event on 8th March in 1908, we receive it again in 2022 in the midst of a health pandemic which has wreaked havoc in the economies and societies in the world and, at the same time, it has showed us the structural inequalities in the development in all areas of our lives.
In this particular time of crisis, women have been at the frontline inside and outside the home. In the private sphere, more than three times the hours of unpaid care work already fell on their backs, the pandemic increased them; and, in the social sphere, their role has been essential in running the soup kitchens, the neighbourhood self-organising, the health promotion, in the neighbourhoods, even when the personal resources and institutional capacity have been limited and the rights recognized, have also been threatened. Despite this work by women, social and protection systems were broken up and calls for help, complaints of violence and the sexual abuse have increased. Women were left at the expense of domestic violence in conditions of greater vulnerability, taking place a rise of feminicides as the cruellest expression against them.
INFOR February 2022: "Global Inequalities and Unemployment
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Describing the reality about the issue «Global inequalities and unemployment» is a great challenge, since the situations around the world are so diverse and varied. Despite the tiredness, the anxiety of tomorrow, the privations, men and women still find energy to involve in the community life, to join social, trade union or political organizations. Driven by a deep faith in humanity, these workers fight together to claim, particularly to governments, rights for a greater justice and social protection.
It is from this reality, around the issue «Global inequalities and unemployment» that activists of WMCW affiliated movements from four continents, testify:
WMCW Message for the Year 2021
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The Church and the world are expecting a lot from us. I start with this statement because we are looking at the effort and commitment of our Pope Francis in doing that the great community of Jesus Project’s followers joins around him, understands the dimension of this proposal that it goes far beyond from those who confess our creed, that reaches to all workers around the world and in every corner of planet, this our House, threatened dangerously today by the disease of consumerism, the greed, negationism, intolerance, rotten fruits of selfishness, this evil that was so struggled by the one who, by Love, gave his life by all us.
These times living are really strange, saddened by the number of deaths resulting from a pandemic, but also by the precariousness in which millions of victims of unemployment live, aggravated by the disease, but also by the mechanisms of wealth concentration of the powerful. We are saddened deeply to see to millions starving to death, despite all the technological advances in food production, but even more saddened by the waste. How worrying it is to see whole families moving aimless, hopeless, frightened by ethnic, religious and political conflicts, looking for a place where they can have peace; families barred by barbed wire, electrified fences, police with water jets and dogs that scare, humiliate and kill. This horrible scene we are witnessed, designed by a death project and produced by a system that nothing has to offer to humanity, is also wounded of death, as Mother Earth, it is dying; but the Mother will recover, due to the wounds, but the perverse system will pass, as others have done.
